LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



limp, ^ §o|njriglji Ifn. . 
Shelf 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

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THE 



GREAT MISNOMER, 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 



A DISSERTATION 



BY 



TIBERIUS GRACCHUS JONES, D. D. 



AUTHOR OF "DUTIES OF PASTORS TO CHURCHES," "ORIGIN AND 
CONTINUITY OF THE BAPTISTS," ETC 



" Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil ; that put dark- 
ness for light, and light for darkness ; that put bitter for sweet, and 
sweet for bitter."— Isaiah. 



(f No. 5^6^/C 

y 1879. "T" 



NASHVILLE, TENN. 

MAYFIELD, JROO-ERS &c CO., 

18-78. 



7T 




2 



i{i^ 






To One who is gone, and to One who is now 
with me — in grateful memory and recognition of 
the sweetest sympathy and the most effective 
help— this little work is lovingly inscribed ; hoping 
that their Grod and mine will graciously accept 
and bless it, as an honest and earnest, however 
slight, contribution to His Cause. 

T. G, J. 



CONTENTS. 



i. 

AN AXIOM. 

II. 

DEFINITION OF COMMUNION. 

III. 

SIGNIFICATION OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

IV. 

APPLICATION OF THE AXIOM. 

V. 

A PURELY MEMORIAL ORDINANCE. 

VI. 

COMMUNION BETWEEN BELIEVERS. 



VI CONTENTS. 

VII. 

COMMUNION WITH CHRIST. 

PAKT I. 

VIII. 

COMMUNION WITH CHRIST. 

PART II. 

IX. 

GRAND OBJECT OF THE RITE. 

X. 

THE GRAND OBJECT SUPERSEDED. 

XL 

CAUSES OF THE SUPERSEDURE. 

PART I. 

XII. 

CAUSES OF THE SUPERSEDURE. 

PART II. 

XIII. 

CAUSES OF THE SUPERSEDURE, 
PART in. 

XIV. 

ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE SUPERSEDURE. 



CONTENTS. Vll 

XV. 

LAW OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

PART T. 

XVL 

LAW OF THE LORD'S SUPPER, 

PART II. 

XVII. 

LAW OF THE LORD'S SUPPER, 

PART Til. 

XVIII. 

LAW OF THE LORD'S SUPPER, 

PART IV. 

XIX. 

LAW OF THE LORD'S SUPPER, 

PART V. 

XX. 

CORRECTION OF THE MISNOMER. 

XXI. 

DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY. 

XXII. 

CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



THE GREAT MISNOMER. 



AN AXIOM. 

J% AMES should be, so far as is possible, sig- 
H nificant of the things named. They should 
express, represent, describe, define them. Not 
more naturally, than logically, in the beginning 
of language, did the first names do this. All 
appreciate the importance of rightly naming 
substances and their properties, in the physical 
world; and of also properly naming— by the 
employment of appropriate terms — thoughts, 
ideas, facts, principles, in the mental realm. 
The name should neither signify too ?nuch, nor 



IO 



THE GREAT MISNOMER. 



too little. Above all, it should not signify any 
thing different from the thing named. Upon 
this dictum — we may call it axiom — depend the 
justness of all science, the soundness of all 
philosophy, the progress and stability of .all 
knowledge. Nay, intimately connected with it 
are all right conduct, pure morality, true reli- 
gion. Disregard it, and falsehood takes the 
place of truth; vice, the place of virtue ; discord 
and confusion, the place of harmony and order. 



II. 



DEFINITION OF COMMUNION. 

O the blessed Supper of our Lord, many 
different appellations have been given. 
It were tedious and unprofitable to mention 
them. The most striking of these, however, 
and that most generally used among the Pro- 
testant churches, and non-Romish, ( as the 
Baptist,) is the sweet-sounding and beautiful 
one, "Communion." What is its meaning? 

To commune, is — to converse, talk together 
familiarly, impart sentiments mutually; to have 
intercourse in contemplation or meditation. Com- 
munion, is— -fellowship, concord, agreement, inter- 
course between persons; interchange of thought, 
feeling, and good offices; giving and receiving. 
As used, ecclesiastically, to express joint par- 
ticipation of the Lord's Supper, and, by metony- 
my, the Lord's Supper itself it is regarded 



THE GREAT MISNOM.ER. 



as a pledge of mutual confidence, a demonstra- 
tion of mutual fraternal love, by those who to- 
gether celebrate the sacred feast. 



III. 

SIGNIFICATION OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

J|| HAT is the Lord's Supper? What are its 
&T essential character and grand design? The 
brief words of Jesus at its institution, and 
of Paul subsequently, clearly show the nature 
and design of the holy rite, and sufficiently 
define it. "He took bread, and gave thanks, 
and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, 
This is my body, which is given for you : this 
do in remembrance of me: Likewise also, the 
cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new 
testament in my blood, which is shed for you." 1 
"The Lord Jesus," says Paul, "the same night 
in which he was betrayed, took bread; and 
when he had given thanks, he brake it, and 
said, Take, eat; this is my body which is 
broken for you : this do in remembrance of me. 

Luke xxii., 19-20. 



14 THE GREAT MISNOMER. 

After the same manner, also, he took the cup, 
when he had supped, saying, This cup is the 
new testament in my blood : this do ye, as oft 
as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as 
often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, 
ye do show the Lord's death till he come." 1 

Simple, yet sublime, rite ! Full of divine 
beauty and significance ! "Nothing could have 
been more properly chosen, to signify the 
efficacy of our Saviour's atonement in giving 
life and joy to our souls, than bread, the staff 
of life, and wine, the exhilarating and strength- 
ening quality of which was expressed in an 
ancient parable, where it is said 'to cheer God 
and men.'" 2 



1 1 Cor. xi., 53-26. 

- Dick's Lectures on Theology, vol. 2, p. 356. 



IV. 



APPLICATION OF THE AXIOM. 



fOW, in the light of the foregoing definition 
of the term Communion, and of the inspired 
statement of the signification of the sacred 
Supper, applying the axiom laid down at the 
commencement of this discussion, we inquire, — 
Is the former, the proper appellation of the 
latter ? 

This famous theological and ecclesiastical 
name, sounding and resounding every where, 
pronounced with sympathy and love and deep- 
est reverence by every tongue, is very beau- 
tiful. It is beautiful in Greek — Kmvwvia • 
beautiful in Latin — Communio\ not less beau- 
tiful in English — Communion. Admired and 
reverenced it was by the Greeks, and equally 
by the Romans. Admired and reverenced it 
is, too, by every Anglo-Saxon heart. And yet 



1 6 THE GREAT MISNOMER. 

that name, as widely applied by the later 
Greek and Roman, by their successors, by 
the whole English-speaking people of the 
world, and by others — however beautiful and 
sweet-sounding, however in itself significant— is 
a false name, a misnomer. As we at once per- 
ceive, and shall yet more fully see, it cannot 
bear the axiomatic test proposed. It is not 
significant of the thing named. It does not 
properly represent or define it. It expresses 
both too much and too little. It not only signi- 
fies something different from the main idea of 
the rite to which it is applied, but it obscures^ 
instead of illustrating, that idea. 



c 



V. 
A PURELY MEMORIAL ORDINANCE. 

ROM those declarations of our Lord, and of 
his apostles, which we have quoted in a 
preceding section, it is clear that the holy 
Supper was designed to be a purely memorial 
ordinance. It is a feast in commemoration of 
Christ, not a feast of communion with each 
other, on the part of those who participate 
in it. This is both theologically and practically 
a distinction of much moment. For the apos- 
tles to have regarded the Supper as a feast 
of fellowship and communion among them- 
selves, rather than of commemoration of the 
dying love of Christ, would have been deeply 
to disparage and dishonor their Lord. It 
would have been to put themselves before 
and above him. This had been the grossest 
and most selfish perversion. But at such a 
time, and by such men, in the immediate 



1 8 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

presence of their adored Lord, whose eye 
was dimmed, whose head was bowed, whose 
breast was heaving with anguish, at the im- 
mediate prospect of being taken from them, 
by a violent and bloody death, such an un- 
natural and monstrous perversion would have 
been altogether impossible. Thinking only of 
Christ, they forgot themselves. 

When, therefore, any of the professed fol- 
lowers of Jesus, make the sacred Supper a 
boasted feast 'of fellowship and mutual communion, 
rather than of commemoration of their dying Lord, 
they are guilty of the perversion which we have 
said was impossible to the high-hearted and gen- 
erous men, inflexibly faithful to Christ and his 
cause, who first observed the blessed rite. 
AVhen, too, they make its joint observance an 
ultimate test of Christian recognition and fel- 
lowship between professed believers, they are 
guilty of a deeper perversion still. Yet more 
do they violate the high and holy design of 
this heavenly rite — this rite of pure, disinter- 
ested love — when they prostitute it to the un- 
worthy purposes of a carnal and selfish paitizan- 
ship. The Supper of our Lord was instituted 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 



I 9 



for no such purposes as these, and cannot sub- 
serve them, without utter disregard of its grand 
design, and violence to its whole spirit. 



VI. 

COMMUNION BETWEEN BELIEVERS 



M, OT having been primarily instituted to effect 
q* personal communion between those who- 
observe it, this sacred rite has no peculiar or 
special adaptation to such an end. In fact, it 
does not effect it at all, except incidentally, 
and in subordination to its main design. As we 
have already intimated, there is no reason to 
believe that Peter, and James, and John, or 
any of the other apostles, had any personal 
and vividly conscious communion with each 
other, when they first partook of the sacred 
Supper. Certainly, it is not to be believed 
that the loyal eleven had any real fellowship or 
communion with the traitor, Judas; if indeed, 
as is doubtful, he participated with them in 
the observance of the rite. Communion be- 
tween belivers, is an active, intelligent, and 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 21 

voluntary exercise of the soul; a matter of 
mental and spiritual consciousness. But, at the 
Lord's Supper, one may not, for obvious 
reasons, at all think of his fellow-participant. 
He may not even be aware of his presence 
in the house of the Lord. They may occu- 
py positions widely apart, or, if they sit side 
by side, they may have no acquaintance, con- 
geniality, or personal sympathy, with each 
other. 

No reason is there, then, drawn either from 
the word of God, or from the nature and fit- 
ness of things, as we shall yet more fully see, 
in the course of our discussion, for regarding 
the Supper of the Lord, as a rite of ■ mu- 
tual communion, a pledge of fellowship, and 
demonstration of fraternal love and confidence? 
among those who together celebrate it — 
though, as we freely admit, there may be, in 
individual instances, and doubtless often is, a 
sweet and beautiful communion of heart with 
heart, as in all other acts of united spiritual ser- 
vice. Of such communion, however, there is 
unquestionably far more, in social prayer and 
praise, in loving converse and companionship, 



22 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

in a thousand acts of united work and wor- 
ship, among those who, upon principle, never 
sit down together at the sacred board, than 
is ordinarily enjoyed at that board itself, by 
those, even, whose views are in full accord 
respecting its character and requisitions. Cer- 
tainly, infinitely more of such communion be- 
tween God's people is there, in the social and 
fraternal exercises which we have mentioned, 
than they could possibly enjoy, if, compromis- 
ing conscience, and sacrificing principle, they were 
together to partake of the Supper of the 

Lord. 

" In former ages of the church, that is, 
from the close of the second century down- 
ward, until heathenism was obliterated, it was 
generally, but erroneously supposed, by almost 
all, that Christian fellowship, or communion, 
consisted chiefly in praying together. Christians 
would never unite in saying 'Our Father who 
art in heaven,' would not even pray in the 
same house of worship, with those whom they 
did not consider othodox Christians, Hea- 
thens, unbelievers, heretics, persons suspended 
or excommunicated ; even catechumens, or can : 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 23 

didates for baptism, and members of other 
sects, were admitted to hear the psalmody, 
and reading of the scriptures, and the dis- 
courses, but were invariably excluded from the 
building, before the prayers of the church were 
offered. Oar views of prayer are much more 
just than these." 1 

So far from there being, in the language 
which we have quoted from the scriptures re- 
specting the institution, nature, and design of 
the Lord's Supper, or in that of any New 
Testament writer concerning it, anything to 
warrant our regarding it as the rite of mutu- 
al communion among those who partake of it 
together, there is nothing to suggest such a 
conception of the holy ordinance. 

And as there is nothing in the language of 
Christ, when he instituted the Supper, nor in 
that of any of the New Testament writers re- 
specting it, to justify the designation of it, in 
this sense, as the Communion, so is there 
nothing to sanction it, in the language employed, 
when the passover, which prefigured the Christian 

Curtis on Communion, pp. 80-81. 



24 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

ordinance, was appointed. In instituting that 
ancient Jewish rite, God said, "And this day 
shall be unto you for a memorial ; and ye shall 
keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your 
generations : ye shall keep it a feast by ordi- 
nance forever." 1 Not the slightest intimation 
have we here, or elsewhere, that the pass- 
over was to be observed as a feast of com- 
munion by the Israelites — a feast of mutual 
recognition and fellowship — or that they ever 
celebrated it as such. Presumptive evidence 
of great value, certainly this is, that the Chris- 
tian passover, the Supper of the Lord, to 
which the former feast constantly referred, and 
in which it has been merged, is to be re- 
garded as a rite, not of communion, but of 
commemoration, 

'Ex. xi., 14, 



VII. 
COMMUNION WITH CHRIST. 

PART I. 

1 HE only passage in the Bible, which might 
^[ seem, in any degree, to favor the naming 
of the Lord's Supper, "the Communion," is 
that in which the apostle, writing to the Co- 
rinthians, twice, in close connection, employs 
that term, (xov/mvia^) He says, "The cup of 
blessing which we bless, is it not the com- 
munion, (zmvcwta), of the blood of Christ? The 
bread which we break, is it not the commun- 
ion, (xotvwvta), of the body of Christ?" 1 But 
this passage, in which, the word is used in 
argument upon another subject, for the pur- 
pose of illustration, and we think without the 
slightest intention of giving name to the Sup- 

l l Cor. x., 16. 



2 6 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

per — as it was never before, or afterwards, 
employed by its author, or other inspired wri- 
ter, in connection with it — by no means war- 
rants the fixed and universal designation in 
question. 

If such an employment of a term, be enough 
to fix a name upon that to which it is applied, 
then is there much more reason for calling the 
contributions for the poor, (as, indeed, they were, 
for some time, often called,) as well as other 
acts of Christian benevolence, "the Communion, 
than for so calling the Lord's Supper. For 
the term zovju>via, {communion,) is, with its 
cognates often applied to them, 1 while it is 
used in connection with that, only in the 
single instance which we have mentioned. 

Turrettine, the celebrated Genevese theolo- 
gian, while accepting the appellation to which 
we object, admits that the apostle, in the pas- 
sage under consideration, did not design to 
give name to the ordinance. He says, "Ubi 
Paulus Coence" etc., — "Where Paul does not 
properly give this name to the Supper; but 

^vom. xv., 26; 2 Cor. viii., 4; ix., 13; Heb. xiii.i 
16.; Rom. xii., 13; Gal. vi., 6; Phil, iv., 4. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 27 

he explains the nature and end of that mys- 
tery, whilst he says, that the sacred symbols 
are the communion of the body and blood of 
Christ; that is, are appointed to seal to us the 
communion of the body and blood of Christ". 1 
The language of the Apostle, in the passage 
specially referred to, simply implies, that partici- 
pants of the Supper, in receiving the elements 
symbolic of his body and blood, are brought 
into intimate spiritual union and fellowship with 
Christ, being assimilated to his nature, by spirit- 
ually partaking, as it were, of the very life and 
substance of his divine being. The idea of 
their being joint participants in this union and 
fellowship with Christ, if at all involved, is still 
entirely subordinate to the main idea. The com- 
munion spoken of by Paul, is communion' with 
Christ, in the cup which represents his blood, 
and in the bread which represents his body — 
a reception, a partaking of him spiritually, in 
his body and blood. Though believers drink 
of the cup, and break the bread together, and 
thus there is a joint participation of them, 

^urrettini Opera, torn, iii., De Sacra Ooena, 
Qurest xxi. Edinburgh Edition. 



2 8 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

this joint n ess of participation, is not a fact 
which the apostle intends to emphasize. We 
think it was not at all prominent in his 
thought, if, indeed, he was distinctly con- 
scious of its presence. The great idea in 
the apostle's mind, to which, as the whole 
scope and spirit of his argument shows, he 
wished to give all possible prominence, was, 
doubtless, not that persons partaking of the 
Lord's Supper, had fellow shp with each other, 
but that, as they, in partaking of it had fel- 
lowship with their divine Lord, so persons 
feasting in heathen temples, had fellowship 
with their false divinities. He wished strongly 
to state this fact, and impressively to illustrate 
it, by a striking and tender allusion to the 
observance of the Lord's Supper, and thus 
effectually to guard his brethren against the 
idolatrous practice, in which some had indulged, 
and which he so deeply deplored. 

In the term zotvtoria, as here employed by 
Paul, the idea of appropriation, is essentially 
involved. Now, participants of the Supper do 
not appropriate each other. But they do appro- 
priate Christ, in his body and blood, or rather, 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL, 29 

in what his body and blood represent. In 
the conception of the apostle, then, the fel- 
lowship and communion enjoyed by partici- 
pants in the sacred rite, are fellowship and 
communion with Christ, with whom they are 
brought into such close and intimate relations, 
as that they partake of and appropriate him, 
spiritually, as one partakes of and appropri- 
ates to his own nourishment and support, 
physically, the meat and drink upon which 
he feeds. Paul was too nicely analytical and 
clear a thinker, and too practically logical, to 
so mix and confuse distinct ideas, as, when 
obviously endeavoring to make prominent, the 
fact of communion 7vith v Christ, to introduce, 
and give prominence to, the different and divert- 
ing idea, of communion with others. 

The renowned Dr. Dick, for many years 
professor of theology, in Glasgow, after quot- 
ing the apostle's language, says, "The mani- 
fest import of these words, is, that by par- 
taking of the symbols of his body and blood, 
we have fellowship with him, in his atoning 
sacrifice, and all its precious fruits." 1 

1 Lectures on Theology, vol. 2., p. 306. 



30 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

The late Dr. Curtis, at one time professor 
of theology in Howard College, and subse- 
quently in the Lewisburg University, speak- 
ing of this celebrated passage, as specially 
indicating ^communion with Christ" says, 
"The apostle was exhorting Christians not 
to partake of meats offered to idols in thei 
temples. Why ? Because the idol was any- 
thing, or the meat offered to idols capable 
of communicating spiritual taint or infection? 
No, but because, by partaking, they would 
seem as if seeking and symbolizing a spirit- 
ual communion with the idols, by giving the 
accustomed token of so doing. This he 
illustrates in vs. 18 — ' Behold Israel after 
the flesh; are not they which eat of the 
sacrifices, partakers of the altar ?' As if he 
had said, do not they who eat together of 
the sacrifices offered to Jehovah, betoken to 
the world their joint worship of the God of 
Israel? In vs. 16, 17, he similarly illustrates 
his argument, by the Lord's Supper; 'the 
cup of blessing which we bless, is it not 
the communion of the blood of Christ?' Is 
it not a token by which we show to the 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 3 1 

world our communion with Jesus? that we 
are partakers of the precious fruits of his 
death for our sins?' The bread that we break, 
is it not a token that we are not ashamed 
to be considered as having imbibed the prin- 
ciples and spirit of the Crucified One ? * * 
Idol altars and temples have crumbled into 
ruins before the power of the Cross, and we 
have happily no use for the apostle's argu- 
ment against partaking of idol's food, but 
only for his illustration." 1 

The statement, (vs. 17,) "For we being 
many, are one bread and one body, for we 
are all partakers of that one bread, is simply 
intended to convey the idea that believers, 
though many or diverse, partaking spiritually, 
(with a true and living faith), of one or the 
same bread, are made one, that is, spiritually 
homogeneous; being assimilated to Christ, and 
therefore, to each other; all alike feeding 
upon the same spiritual food. 

With more reason might the Lord's Supper 
be named the Communion, if communion with 
Christ alone, or mainly, were intended— be- 

1 Coinmunion, p. 74, 75. 



32 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

cause, when properly observed, the rite always 
involves communion with him; communion inti- 
mate, deep, and vital. 

Communion with Christ, however, is enjoyed 
by his people, not only in the celebration of 
the Supper, but in the performance of many 
other acts of devotion, such as the prayer of 
faith — in which there is the sweetest converse 
with the Lord, they humbly and trustingly 
speaking to him, and he making loving re- 
sponse to them — the praise of adoring grati- 
tude, reverent study of the truth, and holy 
meditation on its teachings ; all involving a 
mental and spiritual exercise of the intelligent, 
conscious agent, without which, the observ- 
ance of the Lord's Supper, as well as all other 
outward acts, is but a barren, inert, and nuga- 
tory thing. Surely, then, the Supper, however 
sacred, should not usurp and monopolize the 
character and title which rightly belong to all. 

But, while so many other things share with 
the Supper, communion with Christ, none share 
with the sacred rite, its grand prescribed pur- 
pose, the commemoration of him, in his suf- 
ferings and death. This, alone, was ordained 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 33 

to be a remembrancer of him, and his mighty 
passion, throughout all lands, and among all 
generations of men. No other is so adapted to 
subserve this high and glorious end, as no 
other, ( not excepting baptism itself), is of 
such a nature as at once to embody the most 
important and precious truths of the gospel, 
and, in the most tender and affecting manner, 
to impress them upon the minds and hearts 
of men. For the holy rite is to be viewed 
both subjectively and objectively. Subjectively, it 
is representative of the actual personal sufferings 
and death of our Lord, and thus of all that 
they import, the great essential truths of the 
whole gospel. Objectively, it is commemorative 
of him, and of all that he, as the embodi- 
ment of the entire system of salvation, did, 
and said, and suffered on behalf of his people. 



VIII. 
COMMUNION WITH CHRIST. 

PAET II. 

II O nourish and strengthen the spiritual life of 
^f the believer, through his participation of 
the bread and wine, symbolic of the body and 
blood of Jesus, is, doubtless, an important end 
of the Lord's Supper. As baptism, the ordi- 
nance of initiation into the church, and out- 
wardly the beginning of the new life, has some- 
times been spoken of as symbolically the rite 
of regeneration, and therefore only once to be 
administered; so, not inappropriately, has the 
Lord's Supper, administered only after baptism, 
and often and regularly repeated, sometimes been 
called the rite of nutrition. 

"It is a holy feast, a spiritual repast, a 
divine entertainment," says the celebrated Isaac 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 35 

Barrow, somewhat quaintly, "to which God 
in kindness invites us; to which, if we come 
with well-disposed minds,- he there feeds us 
with most holy and delicious viands, with 
heavenly manna, with most reviving and cherish- 
ing liquor. Bread is the staff of life, the 
most common, most necessary, and most whole- 
some and savory meat; wine is the most 
pleasant and wholesome also, the most spright- 
ly and cordial drink: by them, therefore, our 
Lord chose to represent that body and blood, 
by the obligation of which a capacity of life 
and health was procured to mankind; the 
taking in which by right apprehension, tasting 
it by hearty faith, digesting it by careful at- 
tention and meditation, converting it into our 
substance by devout, grateful and holy affec- 
tions, joined with serious and steady resolu- 
tions of living answerable thereto, will certain- 
ly support and maintain our spiritual life in 
a vigorous health and happy growth of grace; 
refreshing our hearts with comfort and satis- 
faction unspeakable." 1 

Harrow's works, vol. 3, p. 48. 



$6 THE GREAT JMISNOMEK, 

That the spiritual nourishment and support of 
his people, is an important purpose of the 
Lord's Supper, is manifest from the words of 
Christ, at the institution of the sacred feast — 
"And as they were eating, Jesus took bread 
and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to 
the disciples, and said, Take, eat : this is my 
body. And he took the cup and gave thanks, 
and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of 
it; for this is my blood of the New Testament, 
which is shed for many for the remission of 
sins/ 71 

Further evidence still we have in those re- 
markable words of our Lord, in the sixth 
chapter of John, in which, (even if there be 
no direct and special reference by Christ to 
the holy rite, afterward to be instituted, but 
only to himself in his whole sacrificial and 
redeeming work,) the principle under consider- 
ation is clearly involved. 

Olshausen, commenting on these words of 
our Lord, and their relation to the sacred 
Supper, says — "It would indeed undoubtedly 

^fatt., xx vi., 26-28. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 37 

seem inappropriate that the Saviour should 
speak of a rite before its institution, so that 
no one could understand the subject of his 
discourse ; but it may be safely concluded, 
that Christ had at an earlier period touched 
upon the idea from which the rite afterward 
arose. That idea is no other than this, that 
Jesus is the principle of life and nourishment 
to the new regenerated man, not merely for 
his soul and his spirit, but also for his glori- 
fied body. As this principle of life, he offers 
himself, and gives himself, especially in his 
death; hence the mention here, verse 51, (as 
in the institution of the Supper,) of his death; 
although this is by no means to be deemed 
the main point of the whole passage." 1 

But let us read the words of Christ. Al- 
though highly figurative, their real spiritual 
import, when taken in their whole scope, is 
readily apprehended by every intelligent and 
discriminating mind : 

' 'Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, 
I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the 

^omra., vol. 2, pp. 416-417. 



38 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have 
no life in you Whoso eateth my flesh, and 
drin'ceth my blood hath eternal life; and I 
will raise him up at the last day. For my 
flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink 
indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh 
my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. 
As the living Father hath sent me, and I 
live <by the Father, so he that eateth me, 
even he shall live by me. This is the bread 
which came down from heaven; not as your 
fathers did eat manna and are dead : he that 
eateth of this bread shall live forever. * * 
It is the spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh pro- 
fiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, 
they are spirit and they are life." 1 

Referring to this remarkable language of 
our Lord, Dick says — "It is plain that he 
spoke of the benefits which were to result to 
the human race from his death, and of the 
spiritual participation of them by faith; for he 
says, ' He that cometh to me shall never 
hunger, and he that believeth in me shall 
never thirst.' " 2 

l Jno. vi., 53-58, 63. a Leet. Theol., vol. 2, p. 397. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 39 

"The Sod of God," says Edgar, "sus- 
pended the possession of eternal life on the 
eating of his flesh and the drinking of his 
blood. This was the condition without which 
man could have no life. None can possess 
spiritual life, unless, in this sense, they eat 
and drink his body and blood. The manduca- 
tion mentioned by the apostle, is necessary 
for salvation." 1 

The eating of the flesh and the drinking 
of the blood of Christ, are, indeed, necessary 
to the existence, development, and support 
of spiritual and divine life in man. But, as 
the common sense, natural sentiment, and 
reason of men, all utterly recoil at the bare idea 
of a literal physical feeding itpon him, so the 
whole spirit and genius of the gospel, make 
it certain that the partaking of himself to 
which Christ referred, is to be regarded in a 
purely figurative and spiritual sense. In the 
latter view, the myriads of the redeemed 
have all eaten of his flesh, and drunk of his 
blood. In the former, not one of the glorious 

Variations of Popery, p. 388, 



40 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

throng, has been guilty of the horrid, 
revolting, impossible act ; maugre all the 
metaphysical subtleties, audacious assumptions, 
blasphemous asseverations, of the self-stultified 
advocates of transubstantiation. 

The word of God always nourishes and 
strengthens the soul of the believer. It is 
the bread of life and the water of life upon 
which he feasts. Christ is the absolute, eternal 
Word, the impersonation of all truth. He 
who receives him, receives all truths in one; 
receives them, so to speak, condensed and 
concentrated, in their very extract and es- 
sence. 

Observance of all the ordinances of the 
Lord's house, obedience to ail his command- 
ments, stimulates and strengthens, as well as 
trains, the child of God. Prayer, praise, and 
all other acts of worship and of service, give 
a healthful spiritual exercise necessary to the 
growth and full development of the "new 
creature in Christ Jesus. " The believer's 
spiritual stature and strength are determined 
by the faithfulness with which he walks in all 
God's ordinances and commandments. Many 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 41 

an one's spiritual life is weakened and with- 
ered, by long refusal to yield to the teach- 
ings of God's word, and the monitions of 
his own conscience, respecting the duty of 
baptism. At length, obeying, he is re-vitalized, 
blooms in spiritual freshness and beauty, and 
brings forth abundant fruit. So is it with re- 
spect to the Lord's Supper. He who wilfully 
and culpably neglects it, famishes and dies of 
spiritual inanition. Nothing more distinctly 
marks the commencement and progress of 
religious declension, with respect to which it 
is both effect and cause, than such neglect. 
On the other hand, he who pants after God 
as the hart panteth after the water-brooks, 
whose soul, yearning for divine communion, 
" cries out for God, for the living God," 
and who never fails to avail himself of the 
blessed privilege of enjoying him, is spirit- 
ually healthy, robust and vigorous, useful and 
happy. Christ is the absolute and infinite 
Life. His body and blood represent the sub- 
stance and vital principle of his whole being. 
He who rightly receives them, spiritually ap- 
propriates the whole Christ, with all his divine 



42 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

benefits. Some other acts of service are ob- 
jective, and bless reflexively. Hallowed influ- 
ences from Christ, are shed upon the believer, 
in baptism. The devout and loving reception 
of the Lord's Supper, involves an essentially 
subjective exercise, in which Christ himself is 
spiritually received, and "formed within the 
soul, the hope of glory." 

But, though to nourish and strengthen the 
spiritual life of the believer, is so important 
an end of the Lord's Supper, it yields to 
what, for reasons which we have indicated, 
we must yet regard as a far higher end — 
the grand end which our Lord had in view 
in the institution of the blessed rite, that of 
commemorating himself, his sufferings and death, 
with all that He and they involve, and of 
thus keeping in the memory of his people, 
and in the view the whole world, the saving 
truths of the gospel. 

However sweet and profitable may be the 
believer's personal communion with Christ, in 
the worthy observance of the Lord's Supper, 
yet, as that is not its great purpose, to give 
it a name implying this, is both logically and 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 43 

practically wrong, as well as in contravention 
of a sound scriptural interpretation. So to 
name it, as the whole history of the rite 
abundantly shows, is not unattended with 
evil; evil of the most serious character. It 
is an error, and error is never harmless. It 
opens the way to the greatest extravagances 
and superstitions. Witness the papal "tran- 
substantiation," and the Lutheran "consubstan 
tiation;" the kindred conceits of Puseyism, the 
blasphemous and idolatrous mummeries, as 
well as deadly errors, of the "mass," and all 
the gross absurdities connected with the rite, 
as supposed by all ritualists and high-church- 
men, to possess the mystic and marvellous 
virtues of an inexplicable "opus operatum." 
Witness, too, the errors both of theory and 
of practice, even among many who are not 
Papists or Puseyites, or Lutherans, and whom 
we should hesitate to class, generally, with 
strictly high-churchmen or ritualists. Rightly 
regarding the ordinance as one of "commu- 
nion with Christ," but exaggerating its intrinsic 
efficacy, they sometimes administer it, as a 
means of grace, to the impenitent and the 



44 



THE GREAT MISNOMER. 



unbelieving ; and, (as would seem with an idea, 
more or less vague, of its possessing, in itself, 
something of saving virtue,) as a means of 
salvation, to the sick and the dying. 



IX. 

GRAND OBJECT OF THE RITE 

lit 

41 UT, apart from all that we have said, it 

Cf is evident that communion with Christ, 
however involved in proper participation of 
the Lord's Supper, was not, any more than 
the inter-communion of believers, the great 
primary purpose of the appointment of the 
sacred feast — seeing that, without the formal 
rite, such communion, through shiiple faith alone, 
might and would have been enjoyed. That 
great primary purpose, the one grand object 
of the rite, we affirm again, with emphasis, 
was, the commemoration of Christ in his suffer- 
ings and death on behalf of his people. 
Everything else connected with it, however 
important in itself, is inferior to that one grand 
end ; an end, in itself, of great significance, and, 
in its outward bearings, of the utmost mo- 
ment to the whole world. 



46 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

While the Son of God was on earth, he 
displayed his humanity as conspicuously as his 
divinity. There constantly glowed in his heart, 
the sweetest and most beautiful human affec- 
tions. He tenderly loved his disciples. And 
he yearned for their love in return. He 
would never forget them. He would have 
them ever remember himself. It was just be- 
fore the hour arrived, when he w^as to be 
separated from them, by a death of violence 
and outward ignominy; when they were about 
to celebrate together, for the last time, the 
feast which found in him, the demonstration 
and fulfillment of its divine import, that he 
said to his apostles — " With desire I have 
desired to eat this passover with you before 
I suffer, for I say unto you I will not any 
more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the 
kingdom of God.' n Oh! human and divine 
Heart! who may measure the height and depth, 
and length and breadth of thine exceeding 
love and sympathy, in that pregnant and try- 
ing hour ! 

Mliuke xxii., 15-16. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. .47 

Having finished, with his chosen ones, the 
divinely appointed feast of his and their nation, 
for which he had so intensely longed, he at 
once instituted the far richer and more precious 
feast, which was to be the heritage of all 
nations, the perpetual reminder of a greater 
deliverance than that of the first-born of Is- 
rael, when the first-born of Egypt were slain ; 
a memento of the great Deliverer himself, to all 
generations of mankind. 

But, though he instituted the Supper as a 
memento, most precious, of himself, it was 
designed for a far higher purpose than any 
mere personal consideration, dear as that may 
have been, to his warm and susceptible human 
heart. Though it has been truly said that 
"Christ was ever his own theme," and never 
failed to magnify himself, as well as his office, 
he was the most unselfish and least ambitious 
of beings. His self-abnegation was perfect. 
He pleased not himself. He sought not his 
own glory. It was for the benefit of his peo- 
ple, and of the whole lost, ruined world, infi- 
nitely more than for the satisfying of his own 
yearning for their continued love, and unfail- 



48 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

ing remembrance, that he would have them 
constantly commemorate himself and his re- 
deeming work. Such commemoration would 
be productive of incalculable benefits to the 
whole human race. It would put the great 
truths respecting his character and work, his 
sufferings and death, into a concrete and con- 
pact form, far more affecting and impressive, 
than any mere abstract statement of them 
could be. It would concentrate and condense, 
so to speak, the great saving truths of the 
gospel, into a beautiful and simple rite, that 
would outwardly appeal to the senses, pow- 
erfully impress the imagination, arouse and 
keep alive the noblest sentiments of the soul. 
"In the sacrament of the Supper," says the 
German theologian Knapp, "the most im- 
portant truths of Christianity, which we 
commonly only hear or read, are visibly set 
before us, made cognizable to the senses, and 
exhibited in such a way as powerfully to move 
the feelings, and make an indelible impression 
on the memory. Hence this sacrament is 
justly called verbum Dei visibile, ( the visible 
word of God.) Some of the most weighty 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 49 

doctrines of religion which are commonly 
taught us by audible words, through the out- 
ward ear,, are here inculcated by external 
visible signs and actions." 1 

The substance and spirit, indeed, of the 
whole gospel, enshrined in this divine rite of 
commemoration, in connection with its kin- 
dred rite of baptism, would be preserved, as 
other distinguished writers have remarked, by 
the intelligent and appropriate observance of 
them, even if the rest of the recorded gospel 
were lost. "As often as ye eat this bread, 
and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's 
death, till he come. "The Supper," says the 
distinguished author just quoted, "was de- 
signed to be a perpetual sermon on the death 
of Christ, until he shall come again to bring 
his followers into the kingdom of the bles- 
sed." 2 The death of the Lord, is the great 
all-inclusive fact of the whole system of 
salvation, from which all its principles may 
be deduced. Others have come into the 
world to live and to enjoy. Not so Jesus. He 

1 Christian Theology, p. 506. Tb., p. 499. 

D 



5<3 THE GREAT, MISNOMER, 

came to be 'a man of sorrows and griefs 
acquaintance." The grand end of Iris mission 
into the world, was, not to live a noble hu- 
man and divine life, not to teach men, not 
to set before them a high and inspiring ex- 
ample, but — to die. "The greatest thing," says 
President Edwards, "that Christ did in the 
execution of his priestly office, and the great- 
est thing that he ever did, and the greatest 
thing that ever was done, was the offering 
up himself a sacrifice to God. Herein he was 
the antitype of all that had been done by 
all the priests, and in all their sacrifices and 
offerings, from the beginning of the world." 1 

It was to set forth this great fact, in all 
its fullness, and in all its bearings, that Moses, 
in the law, and the prophets wrote. To it 
point all the types and shadows; to it refer 
all the rites and ceremonies ; by it are made 
clear and significant, all the institutions of 
Judaism. The illustration and enforcement of 
this sublime fact, was the end of all the 
preachings, and teachings, and writings, and 

'Edward's Works, vol. 1, p. 409. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. $i 

labors, of the apostles and their co-adjutors. 
The proper observance, therefore, of the 
rite embodying this great all-embracing fact, 
its celebration throughout all lands, and in all 
generations, would give the light of life to 
all people. " Sensible impressions are much 
more powerful than those which are made 
on the understanding. This truth is probably 
neither so fully nor so deeply realized in any 
religious ordinance as the Lord's Supper. 
The breaking of the bread, and the pouring 
out of the wine, exhibit the sacrifice of 
Christ with a force, a liveliness of represen- 
tation, confessed by all Christians, at all times, 
and indeed by most others also; and unri- 
valled in its efficacy even by the passover 
itself. All the parts of this service are per- 
fectly simple, and are contemplated by the 
mind without the least distraction or labor. 
The symbols are exact and most lively por- 
traits of the affecting Original, and present to 
us the crucifixion and the sufferings of the 
great Subject of it, as again undergone before 
our eyes. We are not barely taught ; we see, 
and hear, and, of consequence, feel, that 



52 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

Christ our passover was slain for us, and died 
on the cross that we might live. As this 
event, more interesting to makind than any 
other which has ever oceured, is thus clearly 
presented to us in this ordinance, so those 
doctrines of the Christian system, which are 
most intimately connected with it, are here 
exhibited with a corresponding clearness. Par- 
ticularly, the atonement which this divine Per- 
son thus accomplished for mankind, is here 
seen in the strongest light. With similar cer- 
tainty, is that depraved character of man, which 
is here expiated, unfolded to our view; the 
impossibility of our justification by works of law ; 
our free justification by the grace of God, 
through faith in the blood of Christ ; and; gen- 
erally, the whole scheme of reconciling apostate 
man to his offended Creator. m 

With this one grand purpose in view of pre- 
senting the substance of the gospel succcinctly 
and graphically, to the very eye of the world — a 
purpose infinitely above all others— was the 
holy Supper instituted, and commanded to be 

^wight's Theology, vol. 4, pp. 356-357. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 



53 



universally and perpetually observed, as a 
memorial of its divine Author, and of his great 
sacrificial and saving work. 

In presence of that grand purpose, how 
little seem all others! In comparison with it, 
how insignificant even the sweet communion 
with each other of believers! — a holy exercise 
of soul by no means to be disparaged, but 
which our human spirit of self-exaggeration, 
is prone sometimes to invest with an undue 
sacredness, and to raise to a prominence to 
which it is not entitled. 



X. 



THE GRAND OBJECT SUPERSEDED. 



JT was under the influence of this human 
and carnal spirit of self-exaggeration, 
which we have mentioned, seconded and power- 
fully reinforced by other evil influences, that the 
early, post-apostolic church— teaching that out- 
side its pale was no virtue and no salvation, 
magnifying the importance of communion with 
itself, and immensely over-estimating the be- 
nefits supposed to accrue from such commu- 
nion — superseded the great object for which the 
holy Supper was first ordained. 

It would be ludicrous, if it were not melan- 
choly, to contemplate the absurd exhibitions, by 
the early Christians, of this spirit of self-exagger- 
ation. The grandiloquent titles bestowed by 
the Chinese upon their emperors, the high- 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 55 

flown terms they apply to themselves as a 
nation, and the superb adjectives by which 
"the magnanimous Mexican nation," is wont 
so naively to characterize itself, provoke a 
smile. But it excites very different feelings 
from those of risibility, something far sadder 
than a smile, when we see the early Chris- 
tians whom we have been taught to regard 
with so much reverence and admiration, ap- 
plying to themselves, in a spirit of Pharisaic 
pride, with infinite self-complacency, the most 
exalted language of self-laudation, while pour- 
ing out opprobrious epithets, and heaping up 
anathemas, upon all who ventured to differ 
from them— upon men like Novatian, Do- 
natus the Great, Jovinian, and Vigilantius; of 
whom neither the world nor a corrupt church 
was worthy. The Council of Nice, in 325, 
styled itself "the Great and Holy Synodal An- 
other General Council, about a century later, 
spoke of its own canons as those of " the 
Holy and Blessed Fathers assembled at Ephesus ?1 ! 
And other so-called ecumenical, or universal 
councils, emulating this same spirit of extrava- 
gant self-appreciation, bad taste, and most re- 



56 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

volting vanity, applied to themselves language 
equally lofty. 1 

In this spirit of self-exaggeration, many 
teachers of the early church made participa- 
tion in "the awfui mystery" of the Lord's 
Supper, as administered by themselves alone, 
the test of personal character, and of social 
and religious position. They determined 
by it even business relations and engage- 
ments. Nay, they made it the very pass- 
port and portal to heaven. Apart from it, 
no one could expect patronage, preferment, 
or honor on earth. Without it, the gates of 
paradise were barred and bolted against him 
forever. "There was a tendency," says Isaac 
Taylor, "of everything towards it; it was more 
thought of and regarded than any other ele- 
ment of the religious system; the highest be- 
nefits were connected with a due participation 
in it, and the most terrible evils were the conse- 
quences of even a temporary exclusion from 
the privilege. Before the time when the 
church wielded secular powers, excommunica- 
te Mosheim, Neander, Taylor on Ancient 
Christianity, and Hammond on the Canons. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 57 

tion was its last resource, in dealing with the 
refractory; and after the time when ecclesias- 
tical censures were followed by civil pains, 
it continued to be the terrible precursive act 
of a process which might deprive the victim of 
fortune, liberty, life, and consign him to eternal 
misery." 1 John, the "golden-mouthed," (Chrysos- 
tom,) as Taylor tells us, "lauded the euchanstic 
rite more than the Saviour." When "the rites 
of the dreadful and mystic table" were cele- 
brated, " cherubim and seraphim," he assured 
the people, "hovered trembling over the altar, 
veiling their faces, lest they should catch a 
glimpse of the consecrated elements" 2 

In this view of it, we wonder not that 
men stood in awe of the fearful rite, and its 
terrible mysteries, "which archangels dared 
not look upon." We wonder not at its stu- 
pendous influence, nor at that "intense anxie- 
ty not to be excluded from communion," felt 
by those who regarded admission to it, as the 
climax of all blessedness; exclusion from it, 
the depth of all misery. 

Iknc. Christ., p. 540. ?ifc. f pp. 358-368. 



58 THE GREAT MISNOftER, 

We know that far juster views are now 
taken, by all enlightened, evangelical people. 
But, in that so common diversion of the mind 
from contemplation of the Lord's Supper as 
a devout and grateful commemoration of our 
divine Lord, to other and inferior objects, pro- 
duced under the influence of the self-exagger- 
ating idea of its being a communion with 
ourselves, there is still seen something of the 
old error, still felt much of its baneful influence. 

The extreme prominence so early and so 
generally given to the idea of inter-communion 
between believers at the table of the Lord, 
though unwarranted either by the personal 
teachings of Christ, or by those of his apostles, 
respecting the sacred rite — they having never 
said anything at all about it — is, to some ex- 
tent, the unfortunate result of a very natural 
inference, (which, though based upon a mis- 
conception, is much insisted on,) conspiring 
with the self exaggerating tendency just mentioned, 
in connection with radically defective and su- 
perstitious conceptions of the essential char- 
acter and object of the rite. Eating and 
drinking together, tends to the cultivation of 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 59 

sympathy, and friendship, and fraternal love, 
among men. It has, therefore, been regarded 
by all people as a symbol of good-will and 
fellowship. The Arab of the desert, the sav- 
age of the western wilds, the roving, barba- 
rous Tartar of the Asiatic steppes, the stolid 
Esquimau amid his eternal snows, the im- 
bruted Bushman, even, under the blazing suns 
of Southern Africa, as well as the most 
highly civilized men of ancient and of mod- 
ern times, have all alike thus recognized it. 
Many, therefore, have been led to think that 
Christ must have had very prominently in 
view the cultivation of fellowship and com- 
munion among his followers, when he insti- 
tuted the sacred Supper. But, although this 
may have been, and probably was, one of 
the subordinate, incidental ends contemplated 
by our Lord, and which the holy rite, when 
properly observed, always, to some extent, sub- 
serves, it is to be remarked that while Christ 
never neglects subordinate ends, but, in the 
affluence of his divine wisdom and power, 
constantly associates such ends with more im- 
portant ones, he ever keeps mainly in view, 



6o THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

the supreme end, and is always too mindful 
of order, and the due relations of things, 
ever to allow the subordinate to come into 
competition with the superior; the incidental 
and the inferior to disparage, obscure, or 
usurp the place of the essential and the su- 
preme. As if to avoid all danger of this, 
as well as to guard against other evils, the 
humble repast which he provided for his 
disciples, was made so different from other 
meals, that many, like Dagg and others, have 
doubted that it was intended to be a supper 
at all, and have hesitated to give it that ap- 
pellation, maintaining that Paul probably refer- 
red not to the rite instituted by Christ, when, 
in i Cor. xi., 20, he employed the words, 
' 'Lord's Supper," QKupiaxdy deinvov), but only to 
the agape, or feast of love, which had been 
connected with it. 1 

While perfectly adapted, in its sublime sim- 
plicity, to accomplish its great object, as a 
universal and perpetual memorial of Christ, the 
holy rite is far too simple, serious, solemn, 

l X r an'l of Theol., Part II, pp. 56, 57, 58, 205. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 6l 

spiritual, to have for its main or prominent 
end, that of the ordinary feast. This was so 
strongly felt by the primitive Christians, that, 
in order to give fuller expression to their 
social sympathies, they connected with it the 
more abundant and freer feast of the agape, 
not a divine institution at all, and whose 
abuse by the Corinthians, the apostle so 
severely censured; asking them, (if they must 
have feasts), whether they had not houses of 
their own, in which thus socially and festively 
to indulge themselves, without despising the 
church of God, shaming their poorer brethren, 
desecrating the place dedicated to a pure and 
spiritual service, and degrading, by unworthy 
concomitants, the rite consecrated to infinitely 
higher and holier purposes than those of in- 
dividual and social enjoyment. 1 

In this view, it clearly appears that although 
Christ may have intended, as incidental to his 
main purpose, the cultivation by his followers 
of fellowship and communion, in their observ- 
ance of the rite commemorative of himself, 
that object was an altogether secondary and 

n Cor., xi., 22. 



62 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

inferior one. He made it, indeed, co-incident, 
but not co-ordinate, with his grand design. 

That the Christians of the apostolic age did 
not regard the Lord's Supper as specially a 
rite of communion with each other, we have 
intimated, in what we have just now stated 
of their connecting with it the agape, or feast 
of love, "at which," in the language of 
Conybeare and Howson, "they met to realize 
their fellowship one with another." 1 And it 
was only where the perversion and abuse of 
it, as at Corinth, made it necessary to se- 
parate it from the Lord's Supper, and finally 
to abolish it altogether, that, as is most prob- 
able, the mutual fellowship which the agape 
was designed to cultivate, was supposed to be 
an essential object of the sacred Supper itself, 
and that the latter, filling its own place, and that 
of the agape, began to be termed, under the 
force of influences of which we are now to 
speak, the Communion: and that the grand 
object of Christ, in the institution of the 
blesse:! rite, was superseded by other and 
infinitely inferior ends. 

Life and Epistles of St. Paul, p. 385. 



XI. 
CAUSES OF THE SUPERSEDURE. 

PART I. 

411 E cannot but suspect that like many other 
^T objectionable things, which the post-apos- 
tolic church connected with Christianity, the 
great misnomer upon which we are animad- 
verting, had something of a pagan origin. 

Through misapprehension of Paul 1 s before-men- 
tioned use of the term zotvatvia, (in which, as 
in other instances, impelled and guided by an 
unerring inspiration, he appropriated, as fair 
spoil, a Greek idea, and wisely employed it in 
illustration and enforcement of his argument,) in 
connection with the all-pervading and potent 
Hellenic and heathen influence then prevailing, 
this might very naturally and easily have hap- 
pened. 



64 THE GREAT MISNOMER. 

Turrettin, who, on general grounds, accepts 
junvtovia as an appellation of the Lord's Sup- 
per, referring to Paul's particular use of the 
word in i Cor. x., 16, after affirming that 
the apostle did not intend by it to give name to 
the ordinance, and stating the special sense in 
which he employs the term, says, respecting 
the free construction of his language by the 
early fathers — "Hinc factum ut patres pas- 
sim," etc., — "Hence it was that the fathers 
generally designated the whole observance by 
the name of the Communion." Specially allud- 
ing to Dionysius the Areopagite, and to Chrysos- 
tom, (Greek fathers), he says that the one 
designated the Supper as "the mystery of the 
congregation, (^yarcw.c), or of the communion" 
Q/.ov;uji*-), and that the other called it "the 
spiritual and tremendous communion of the 
mysteries" — both fathers, like so many others, 
earlier than Chrysostom, and later than Diony- 
sius, misconceiving the nature and grand de- 
sign of the rite. 1 

In the second and third centuries, the terms 

1 Turrfttini Opera, III., De Sacra Coena, Qusest. 
x*i., p. 361. Edinburgh Edition. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 65 

Koivwvia and communio, seem, according to 
Origen, not to have been used of the Lord's 
Supper particularly, but only in a general 
sense of Christian fellowship} In the fourth 
and succeeding centuries, as we learn from 
Augustine, Basil the Great, and others, 2 they 
were employed for the act of taking the Sup- 
per, and for the elements, and so for the Sup- 
per itself; though its more general appellation, 
among the Greeks, especially, for a consider- 
able time had been, and still continued to be, 
besides that of the eucharist, (ev^dpcorca), the 
purely pagan one, rd riAetov, — the finishing, per- 
fecting, consummating rite ; or, as Hammond ren- 
ders . it — " the Perfection?™ 

*Orig., III., 185. B, 

2 Aug., III., on Matt, vi.., 11— ''Qui 11011 quotidie 
co3ikj dominicse communicant/'' Contra Cres- 
conium, 3, 35— "Si in communione sacramen- 
toruin mali maculant bonos." Sulpicius Severus, 
II., 37 — "Athanasius [Marcellum] a communione 
suspendit." Basil the Great, IV., 800 -0 xk£(paq 
hidorhv xitoAv&JJGeTcu p&vov rijc xoivmviaq rwv 
^ayuurtidTiDv. Joannes Damascenus, DeFide Or- 
thod., IV., 13 — u Ata to xotvcwetv 'flfJ-aq d( abr?^ 
toj XpL<TT(f)....zou l £vou<r0cu dkXijXot^J" 

*Oii the Canons, p. 157. 

3) 



66 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

Thus we see that the terms zovswvta and 
communio, not used at all as appellations of 
the Lord's Supper, in the apostolic age, and 
employed chiefly to signify fellowship, in gen- 
eral, among Christians, for some time there- 
after, gradually assumed a technical sense in 
relation to the rite, until they became, in 
process of time, its fixed appellatives. 

How this was, most probably, brought about, 
is a matter of no little interest and impor- 
tance ; and we trust we shall be pardoned 
for considering it somewhat at length. 

Discussing the ancient and universal rite of 
sacrifice, the learned and able Bishop War- 
burton says — " This important rite first dic- 
tated by natural reason, did not long con- 
tinue in its original integrity. Of all the 
customs in use amongst men those respecting 
religion are most liable to abuse. For the pas- 
sions of hope and fear become then most in- 
ordinate when the mind is taken up and 
occupied in the offices of divine worship. 
At this season, the sobriety of common sense 
is often forced to give way to the extrava- 
gance of the imagination, * * Sacrifice being 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 67 

a scenical rite, it was principally fitted to 
strike the fancy; which, delighting in para- 
dox and mystery, would riot in this en- 
chanted ground, till it Had lost sight of the 
simple meaning of a plain expressive action. 
* * Under this state of delusion, eucharistical 
and propitiatory sacrifices were soon imagined 
to receive their chief value from the costliness 
of the offering ; and hecatombs were supposed 
more acceptable to heaven than purity of 
mind, adorned with gratitude, and humble 
reliance on the Deity. * \ Pomp of sacrifice 
was everywhere preferred to the piety of the 
offerer. * * But, in expiatory sacrifices, mat- 
ters went still worse. For, in these, the 
passion of fear being predominant, strange 
enormities were soon superadded to the fol- 
lies of the worshipers." 1 

Though employed in reference to the gen- 
eral rite of sacrifice, our author's words 
have, we think, a special and most forcible 
application to the Lord's Supper, as con- 
ceived and celebrated by the church of the 

1 Divine Legation of Moses, vol. 3, pp. 375, 376. 



68 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

second and third centuries, and later. For 
it was, by multitudes, regarded as a sacrifice, 
eucharistical, propitiatory, expiatory, and its 
observance had become pre-eminently "sceni- 
cal." 

The assumption of false principles is inti- 
mately connected with the assumption and 
acceptance of false terms, or of terms used 
in false senses, "How much turns, often, 
(and it is an observation perpetually offering 
itself in the perusal of church history), upon 
an insensible substitution of a technical for 
the general and genuine sense of an ethical 
term! It was just by the aid of some of 
these hardly perceptible substitutions, that the 
ready means were formed of gaining an ap- 
parently scriptural warranty for practices fla- 
grantly contravening the spirit and meaning 
of scriptural morality/' 1 

How applicable this general statement of 
the learned Isaac Taylor, to the particular 
case in hand - the substitution of the techni- 
cal term "Communion/ 7 for "the general 
and genuine sense" of the Lord's Supper ! 

1 Ancient Christianity, p. 116. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 69 

Many terms taken from the pagan vocab- 
ulary, (by men not inspired like Paul, and 
the other writers of the Bible, and not pure 
and wise like them), conveying false and 
injurious ideas, were early incorporated into 
the literature of the church. Chrysostom 
speaks of Peter as the Praefect of the uni- 
versal church — thus making way with his 
splendid eloquence and vast influence, for 
the fixed idea, (then, and for some time ear- 
lier, rapidly forming), of his supremacy, as 
well as primacy, over a world-wide ecclesiastical 
empire. The calling of his supposed suc- 
cessor, by titles Peter never knew, Pope, 
(iza--az, papa), Sovereign Pontiff, (Pontifex 
Maximus), etc., as well as the calling of a 
local church, (the church of Rome,)— from the 
very nature of things, a limited organization — 
the Catholic, {I(a$ohx*q), or Universal Church, — 
(thus, as Barrow wittily says, "committing a 
bull, implying Eome and the universe to be 
, the same place" 1 ), was a natural sequence, 
and followed fast 

Harrow's Works, vol. 3, p. 20L 



70 THE GREAT' MISNOMER. 

The term mysteries, ([werypia), in its pagan 
sense, was early applied to the doctrines and 
ordinances of the gospel, and, indeed, to the 
whole Christian system. "The profound re- 
spect that was paid to the Greek and Ro- 
man mysteries," says Mosheim, "and the 
extraordinary sanctity that was attributed to 
them, was a further circumstance that in- 
duced the Christians to give their religion a 
mystic air, in order to put it upon an equal 
footing, in point of dignity, with that of the 
pagans. For this purpose, they gave the 
name of mysteries to the institutions of the 
gospel, and decorated particularly the holy 
sacrament, (the Lord's Supper), with that sol- 
emn title. They used in that sacred insti- 
tution, as also in that of baptism, several of 
the terms employed in the heathen mysteries ; and 
proceeded so far, at length, as even to adopt 
some of the rites and ceremonies of which these 
renowned mysteries constituted. This imita- 
tion began in the eastern provinces; but after 
the time of Adrian, who first introduced the 
mysteries among the Latins, it was followed 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 7 I 

by the Christians who dwelt in the western 
parts of the empire. A great part, there- 
fore, of the service of the church in this 
century, [the second], had a certain air of the 
heathen mysteries, and resembled them consid- 
erably in many particulars." 1 

The word "sacrament" (sacramentiwi) it- 
self, which has so much mystified, by the 
various senses in which it has been employed, 
both the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's 
Supper, as well as the minds of men, fur- 
nishes another signal instance of the deriva- 
tion, by the Christian fathers, of famous ec- 
clesiastical terms from pagan sources. The 
original Latin word {sacr amentum) meant an 
oath, "on account of its sacred nature," par- 
ticularly the milita7j oath. The "comparison of 
their vocation to a military service," being, 
as Neander says, "a favorite one," among 
the early Christians, the word was generally 
used by them, in this sense, in connection 
with the ordinances of baptism and the 
Lord's Supper; they thus intending to signify 

Ecclesiastical History, vol. 1 , pp. 464, 465. Mae- 
laine's edition. 



72 THE GREAT' MISNOMER, 

that in receiving these rites, they virtually 
took "the Christian's military oath," by which 
"they bound themselves to live and fight as 
soldiers of God and of Christ m The word 
also signified among the Romans, a sum of 
money deposited as a forfeit in litigated cases, 
and "which was devoted to sacred uses.' 7 
In ecclesiastical Latinity, the term assumed 
through pagan Greek and other influences, a 
new meaning, and was employed as the 
equivalent of fj.ofrrrjpur^ (mystery), a term signi- 
fying any "secret and unknown thing,' 7 and 
employed by the Greek Christians "to de- 
note not only the profound and incomprehen- 
sible doctrines of the Trinity and the 
Incarnation, but also Baptism and the Lord's 
Supper, and especially the latter, which was 
called c ajfiov fwanjpioy, (the holy mystery); 
partly no doubt because under external sym- 
bols spiritual blessings were veiled, but partly 
also on account of the secret manner in which 
it was celebrated. As the heathen had their 
mysteries, to which none but the initiated 

'Hist. CI). Rel. and Oh., vol. 1, pp. 307, 309. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 73 

were admitted; so the church came, at an 
early period, to allow none to be present 
when the Lord's Supper was administered, 
but the baptized ; and heathens, Jews, ex- 
communicated persons, and catechumens were 
excluded." 1 The word "was adopted the more 
willingly by the fathers, because they were 
accustomed to compare the doctrines and rites of 
Christianity, with the doctrines and ceremonies of 
the pagan mysteries, in order to secure for them 
a higher regard and authority among the 
heathen." 2 

Even the common conception and use, by 
the early Christians, of the horrid stake and 
transverse beam on which Jesus died, the 
cross, (crux, araopoq,) — the fruitful source of 
so many egregious errors and monstrous su- 
perstitions — seems to have been, ( through 
undue liberties taken with language), far more 
pagan than Christian. The sense of araupoq 
and crux, as used by the Greek and Roman 
writers, in their higher and broader sense, is 

1 Dick , s Lectures on Theology, vol. 2, pp. 353, 354. 
2 Knapp\s Theology, p. 480. 



74 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

very different from that they bear when ap- 
plied to the post, or tree, on which his ene- 
mies impaled the Son of God. "The cross 
was used emblematically before the Christian 
era. Upon a multitude of medals and ancient 
monuments, are to be found crosses placed 
in the hands of statues of Victory, and of 
figures of emperors. It was also placed upon 
a globe, which, ever since the days of Augus- 
tus, has been the sign of the empire of the 
world, and the image of victory. The shields, 
the cuirasses, the helmets, the imperial cap, 
were all thus decorated." 1 The malefactor's 
cross, in the time of Christ, "was simply a 
piece of wood, fastened across a tree, or up- 
right post, on which were executed criminals 
of the very worst character." 2 Hence Peter 
charged the Jews with having slain and 
hanged Jesus, "on a free."* In his first Gen- 
eral Epistle he uses the same expression — 
" He bore our sins in his own body, on the 
tree."* Paul, too, more .than once employs it. 5 

MSnc. Americana, Art. Cross. s fbid. 3 Acts v. 30; 
x. 39. 4 1 Pet. ii. 24. 5 See Acts xiii. 29, and Gal. 
iii. 13, in connection with Deut. xxi. 23. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 75 

The handsome cross, formed of ebony, and 
of ivory, and of gold, used as a charm and 
amulet, as well as ornament, by highly im- 
aginative, sentimental, and superstitious Chris- 
tians — in its simple, but striking form, furnish- 
ing, at a later time, the outline model for 
their churches and cathedrals — the adored 
cross, worn near the heart of the sad-visaged 
monk, and the lonely eremite • pendent from 
the neck of woman ; engraved or embossed 
on the shield of the soldier, and of the gallant 
knight; adorning the proud escutcheons of 
prince and of noble ; emblazoned on the wav- 
ing banners of triumphant armies ; surmount- 
ing the turrets and spires, towers and domes 
of gorgeous temples — this was a very differ- 
ent thing; not half, nor a hundredth part so 
like "the accursed tree," the rude and mis- 
erable frame, the savage gibbet, on which 
hung "the Prince of Life," as it was like 
the beautiful Greek or Latin cross of the 
poets and mycologists — a graceful and attrac- 
tive symbol of the generative principle, of 
victory, and of empire. The emperor Con- 
stantine erected "in the midst of Rome, his 



76 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

own statue, bearing a cross in its right hand ; 
with an inscription which referred the victory 
of his arms, and the deliverance of Rome, to 
the virtue of that salutary sign, the true 
symbol of force and courage. The same symbol 
sanctified the arms of the soldiers of Con- 
stantine ; the cross glittered on their helmets, 
was engraved on their shields, was interwoven 
into their banners ; and the consecrated em- 
blems which adorned the person of the em- 
peror himself, were distinguished only by 
richer materials, and more exquisite workman- 
ship." The imperial standard, "the Labarum, 
an obscure, though celebrated name, which 
has been vainly derived from almost all the 
languages of the world, supported a crown 
of gold which enclosed the mysterious mono- 
gram at once expressive of the figure of the 
cross, and the initial letters of the name of 
Christ." 1 

Employed as it was by the pagans, it had 
a far nobler use than that to which it was 
subsequently often so profanely consecrated. 

decline and Fall of Roman Empire, vol. 2, pp. 
260, 261. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 77 

Though having then no recognized connec- 
tion with the idea of death, but rather of 
life, it was a widely diffused and strik- 
ing prophecy, perhaps, of the rise and progress, 
the greatness and glory of the empire of 
Him, who, though He was to be so cruelly 
and ignominiously crucified, was to win, in his 
deepest defeat, his highest victory; and out of 
death, to bring everlasting life. But, while it 
subserved this glorious end, it also subserved 
the humbler one, of showing how came from 
pagan rather than from Christian sources, the 
early conception and the practice of those, 
who, more imbued with idealism, and senti- 
ment, and superstition, than with the spirit 
of genuine devotion, were more captivated by 
the splendid symbolic and typical prophecy, 
than by the plainer literal fulfillment itself. 

Carried away with the enthusiasm of such 
conceptions, transported by the fervors of 
religious devotion, and also moved by the 
desire to excuse and give color to their ven- 
eration, not to say adoration, of the mere 
material cross, "the Christian writers, Justin, 



78 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Jerome, and Maxi- 
mus of Turin, have investigated, with toler- 
able success, the figure or likeness of a cross, 
in almost every object of nature or art — in 
the intersection of the meridian and equator, 
the human face, a bird flying, a man swim- 
ming, a mast and yard, a plow, a standard^ 
etc., etc., etc. 1 

Need we wonder, in view of all this, if, 
(from the same source whence came so many 
other errors and extravagances, and so many 
wrongly applied terms), "fj zotva>v(a™ in an er- 
roneous sense, early became stereotyped as 
the fixed and unfortunate appellation of our 
Lord's m e mo rial rite ? 

But we are not yet done with our authorties. 

decline and Fall, vol. 2, p. 260— Note. 



XII. 

CAUSES OF THE SUPERSEDURE. 

PART II. 

^PEAKING of Tertullian as having "given 
*j the clue, (which may, indeed, elsewhere 
be found clearly enough), to the institution 
of celibacy, as a permanent order in the 
church," the learned author of the valuable 
work on "Ancient Christianity and the Doc- 
trines of the Oxford Tracts," says- — "Satan 
had his devoted widows, and his virgin priest- 
esses, and should not Christ have the like ? 
The well known heathen practices, in this 
respect, were looked upon with a sort of 
jealousy, by the ill-judging leaders of the 
church, who deemed it a point of honor not 
to be outdone in any extravagant act or prac- 
tice of devotion by the Gentiles, over whom 
they might have been content to claim the 
genuine superiority of real virtue. The same 



8o THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

fatal ambition, as we shall see hereafter, ope- 
rated as a principal means of perverting the 
ritual and system of worship, and of spoiling, in 
all its parts, the simplicity of the gospel." 1 

Tertullian, ' : the most vigorous, as well as 
one of the earliest of the Christian writers, 
and the contemporary of men who had con- 
versed with the immediate successors of the 
apostles," was a man of culture, a lawyer of 
ability and position, and had been a pagan. 
In the passage referred to by Taylor, as 
"giving the clue to the institution of celibacy," 
Tertullian says---- 4 'Among the heathen, a strict- 
ness of discipline, in this respect, is observed, 
which ours do not submit to. But these re- 
straints the devil imposes on his servants, and 
he is obeyed ; and hereby stimulates the ser- 
vants of God to reach an equal virtue. The 
priests of Gehenna retain their continence; 
for the devil knows how to destroy men, 
even in the practice of the virtues; and he 
cares not, so that he does but slay them, 
whether it be by the indulging of the flesh, 

1 Taylor's Anc. Christ, p. 138. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 8 1 

or by mortifying it." To which Taylor adds 
— 6i Well would it have been for the church, 
had this double-dealing of the adversary been 
thoroughly understood, and so those devices 
resisted, which were as fatal to the serious 
and fervent, as the common baits of sensu- 
ality are to the mass of mankind. A false 
principle, once assumed, under strong excite- 
ment, has the power to infatuate even the 
strongest and the best informed minds, and to 
lead them to any extent of extravagance." 1 

"Deep-rooted superstition," says Warbur- 
ton, ''is always spreading wide and more 
wide." And it is hard to eradicate. It seems, 
indeed, well-nigh immortal. How did that of 
the early Christian fathers, with wondrous 
celerity, overspread the world! How long has 
it endured ! How long does it promise still 
to endure ! What a huge crop of incredible 
errors, of unspeakable evils to mankind, has 
it brought forth, and does it promise still to 
bring forth! "The imitation of paganism," as 
Gibbon, (in common with the other authors 

l Anc. Christ, pp. 138, 139. 



82 . THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

whom we have quoted), phrases it, was, in 
great part, its product, with its whole "hier- 
archy of saints and angels, of imperfect and 
subordinate deities," its "images and relics," 
its "visions and miracles," and all the other 
innumerable perversions and abominations of 
popery 1 

Even " after the conversion of the imperial 
city, the Christians," says Gibbon, "still con- 
tinued, in the month of February, the annual 
celebration of the Lupercalia ; to which they 
ascribed a secret and mysterious influence on 
the genial powers of the animal and vege- 
table world." The popish "Jubilees," of a 
later date, the same author further tells us, 
were the copy of the "Secular Games," which 
had been instituted or revived by the pagan 
emperor Augustus." 1 

The puthor of the well-known work on the 
"Variatioiis of Popery," the distinguished Dr. 
Edgar, speaking of that great theological fig- 
ment, Purgatory, first hinted at by Augustine, 
and subsequently made a fixed and capital 

2 See Decline and Fall, vol. 3, p. 493, and vol. 1, p. 
293, with Note. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 83 

dogma of the papal church, says — "The ab- 
surdity has, with some modifications adapting 
it to another system, been stolen, without be- 
ing acknowledged, from heathenism ; and appended 
like a useless and deforming wen, to the fair 
form of Christianity." 1 

As it was in respect to the institutions of 
celibacy and monachism, the festivals of the 
Lupercalia, the lustrations and processions, 
the jubilees, purgatory, and innumerable other 
unscriptural and baleful things, gradually in- 
troduced ; the worship of the Virgin, the 
saints., angels, images, etc., conceived and de- 
veloped amongst a corrupt and paganized 
people, so was it respecting the Lord's Sup- 
per- perverted views of it, at first, and the 
application to it of erroneous terms, all cul- 
minating, at last, in paying divine homage to 
the "consecrated host." 

There were strong influences leading to this 
deep and wide-spread defection from truth. 
On the one hand, a disposition, as has been 
said, to rival aiid outvie the heathen, in some of 

1 Variations of Popery, p. 516. 



84 - THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

their most noted customs and institutions. On 
the other, a worthier desire to propitiate 
and concilitate them, and thus to win them 
to Christianity. 

Referring to the corruption of the pagan 
mysteries, Warburton says — "A like corrup- 
tion, from the same cause, crept even into the 
church, during the purest ages of it. The primi- 
tive Christians, in imitation, perhaps, of these 
pagan rites, or from the same kind of spirit, 
had a custom of celebrating vigils in the night ; 
which at first were performed with all becom- 
ing sancity, but in a little time they were so 
overrun with abuses, that it was necessary to 
abolish them." 1 

Alluding to the denunciation of the pagan 
mysteries, by some of the early fathers, the 
same celebrated author says — "But here comes 
in the strange part of the story; that after 
this, they should so studiously and formally 
transfer the terms, phrases, rites, ceremonies, 
and discipline of these odious mysteries into 
our holy religion ; and thereby very early 

MMvine Legation, vol. 1, p. 225. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 85 

vitiate and deprave what a pagan writer. (Ami- 
anus Marcellinus, ) could see and acknowl- 
edge to be absohtta et simplex, as it came out 
of the hands of its author. Sure, then, it 
w T as for some more than ordinary veneration 
the people had for all these mysteries, that 
could incline the fathers r-f the church to so 
fatal a counsel ; however, the thing is notorious, 
and the effects have been severely felt.' 1 

It was under the influence of this extra- 
ordinary "veneration which the people had 
for the mysteries," as well as, perhaps, from 
their own secret learnings, in sympathy with 
the popular mind, that the early fathers, as 
Casaubon, (cited by Warburton, ) tells us, 
largely appropriated terms, doctrines, and rites, 
derived from those mysteries, and applied them to 
the gospel. They not only called the plain and 
simple ordinances of Baptism and the Lord's 
Supper, "mysteries," but they also designated 
them by many other pagan appellations, some- 
times, as he says, even calling them "orgies.'' 
The Priests, (as they early began, from Juda- 

^ivine Legation, vol. 1, p. 230. 



86 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

istic and pagan influences combined, to call 
the humble ministers of Jesus,) bore a variety 
of pagan titles, such as fmardt^ iwaTapbyoi, 
leporeXstrrdt, ( initiators into sacred myste- 
ries J) So, too, did Christians, generally, bear 
such titles. They were called fjLe/iurj/jJvot, fiuffrdt, 
fio(7rayd>pjToc : (the initiated into sacred mys- 
teries. ) And as there were " grades" in the 
pagan rites, so the enthusiastic and ambitious 
fathers formed, in accordance with them, 
grades in the simple Christian rites— the 
grades of "purification," of "initiation," and 
of "consummation.'* Cicero, a little before, 
had spoken of the "better hope," with which 
the Attic mysteries inspired the dying. So 
the fathers and leaders of the church, more 
than matched the high claim of the great 
philosopher and orator on behalf of those cele- 
brated rites; teaching that the "mysteries of 
Christ" — the "sacraments" — gave "health and 
everlasting life." to all who participated in 
them; while, for those who neglected them, 
hope, beyond the grave, there was none. 
The authors of the vain superstitions of the 
heathen mysteries, presumed to claim for 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 87 

their most favored votaries, the honors of 
deification. So the Christian leaders, deter- 
mining not to be outdone, claimed, too, for 
their mysteries, the same divine power ; main- 
taining that they who rightly observed them, 
would rise to the dignity and glory of gods, 
in the future world ! As the heathen had 
their tesserce, (pass-words, or tokens, for mu- 
tual recognition at their secret assemblages 
and feasts,) so the early Christians had their 
" tesserae,'' too, for a like purpose. The 
heathen, dismissing from their sacred assem- 
blies the uninitiated, employed a fixed formula, 
and cried out, [we omit the Greek of simi- 
lar sense with the Latin,] " Procul este Pro- 
fani !" — Away, ye Profane Ones! So, too, the 
Christians had their formula of dismission; 
and before their "secret and terror-striking 

w mysteries" opened, cried out, through their 
herald, the "Levite" or Deacon^ " Omnes 
catechumeni, foras discedite, omnes possessi, 
omnes non initiati!" — All ye catechumens, all 
within the sacred precincts, all ye uninitiated ones, go 

forth! The pagans performed their secret rites 
by night. So, following them, did the Chris- 



88 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

tians perform theirs, too, nocturnally. Some of 
them spoke glowingly of "the most splendid 
night of vigils." The solemn silence and re- 
serve maintained with respect to the deeper 
secrets of their mysteries, by the pagan hiero- 
phants, were closely imitated by the Chris- 
tian teachers of the early church. The more 
sacred of the holy things of the heathen, the 
incommunicable things, {to. aizoppr^a^) were made 
known to the more advanced votaries alone ; 
while the communicable (rd az(popa,) might be 
taught to others. So the fathers of the church 
had their communicable and their incommunica- 
ble things — their to. h.d><>;>a. and their rd 
d-opp'fjTa" 1 

Warburton, having quoted from Casau- 
bon's Sixteenth Exercitation on the Annals 
of Baronius, the passage from which the 
foregoing statements are substantially derived, 
proceeds to say — "But the worst part of the 
story is still behind, which the concluding 
words of the quotation will not suffer me to 
pass over in silence. These fathers used so 

'Div. Leg., vol. 1, pp. 390, 391. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 59 

strange a language in speaking of the Last 
Supper, that it gave occasion to a corrupt 
and barbarous church, in after times to in- 
graft upon it a doctrine more stupendously 
absurd and blasphemous than ever issued from 
the mouth of a pagan priest. What is fur- 
ther to be lamented in the affair is this, 
that the fathers who so complaisantly suffered 
themselves to be misled by these mysteries, in 
their representation of the Christian faith, would 
not suffer the mysteries to set them right, 
in the meaning of a term frequently found 
in the New Testament, and borrowed from 
those rites, namely, the very word itself, 
mystery ; which, amongst the men from whom 
it was taken, did not signify the revealing of 
a thing incomprehensible to human reason; 
but the revealing of a thing kept hid, and , 
secreted, which yet, in its nature, was very 
plain and intelligible/' 1 

In addition to all this, it may be proper 
to say that the heathen had, in connection 
with their mysteries, not only, as we have 

'Div. Leg., vol. I, p. 891. 



90 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

seen, ' 'Vigils," but "the Confessional" and 
"Penance," and " Probation" preparatory to 
imitation into the greater mysteries — a proba- 
tion strikingly resembling that of the cate- 
chumens, or candidates for baptism and ini- 
tiation into the church and its mysteries. 

Is it an accidental coincidence that the post- 
apostolic Christians had all these things in com- 
mon with the pagans 2 Hardly! 

That this coincidence was designed, and delib- 
erately effected, by the early Christians, has 
been, perhaps, already sufficiently shown; but 
"to make assurance doubly sure," we give 
additional testimony, equally learned and un- 
impeachable. 

"We have already mentioned," says Dean 
Waddington, "the copious transfusion of heathen 
ceremonies into the Christian 7C>orship, which had 
taken place before the end of the fourth century, 
and to a certain extent paganized, (if we 
may so express it), the outward form and 
aspect of religion; those ceremonies became 
more general, and more numerous, and so 
far as the calamities of the times would per- 
mit, more splendid, in the age which followed. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 9 1 

To console the convert for the loss of his favor 
ite festivals, others, of a different name, but 
similar description, were introduced." 1 

Mosheim, speaking of the church in the 
fourth century, says that there was "a pre- 
posterous desire of imitating the pagan rites, 
and of blending them with the Christian wor- 
ship. The public processions and supplica- 
tions," continues he, "by which the pagans 
endeavored to appease their gods were now 
adopted into the Christian worship and cele- 
brated with great pomp and magnificence in 
several places The virtues which had for- 
merly been ascribed to the heathen tempos, 
to their lustrations, to the statues of their 
gods and heroes, were now attributed to 
Christian churches, to water consecrated by 
certain forms of prayer, and to the images 
of holy men. And the same privileges that 
the former enjoyed under the darkness of 
paganism, were conferred upon the latter, 
under the light of the gospel, or rather 
under that cloud of superstition that was 
obscuring its glory. It is true that as yet 
Church History, p. 118. 



92 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

images were not very common; nor were 
there any statues at all. But it is at the 
same time as undoubtedly certain, as it is ex- 
travagant and monstrous, that the worship of 
the martyrs was modelled by degrees, according 
to the religious services that were, paid to the 
gods before the coming of Christ. m 

Recurring to this subject, in another con- 
nection, the same distinguished historian says 
— "The rites and institutions by which the 
Greeks, Romans, and other nations, had for- 
merly testified their religious veneration for 
fictitious deities, were now adopted, with 
some slight alterations, by Christian bishops, 
and employed in the service of the true 
God. We have already mentioned the rea- 
sons alleged for this imitation, so proper to 
disgust all who have a just sense of the 
native beauty of genuine Christianity. These 
fervent heralds of the gospel, whose zeal 
outran their candor and ingenuity, imagined 
that the nations would receive Christianity 
with more facility, when they saw the rites 

Ecclesiastical History, vol. 1, p. 282. Maclaine's 
Edition. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 93 

and ceremonies to which they were accus- 
tomed, adopted in the church, and the same 
worship paid to Christ and his martyrs, which 
they had formerly offered to their idol dei- 
ties. Hence it happened, that in these times, 
[but little more than two hundred years after 
the apostles], the religion of the Greeks and 
Romans differed very little in its external 
appearance, from that of the Christians. Both 
had a most pompous and splendid ritual. 
Gorgeous robes, mitres, tiaras, wax tapers, 
crosiers, processions, lustrations, images, gold 
and silver vases, and many such circum- 
stances of pageantry, were equally to be seen 
in the heathen temples and the Christian 
churches." 1 

Edgar, having spoken of "the use and wor- 
ship of images adopted from gnosticism or gen- 
tilistn" as an " ugly excrescence," an "adventi- 
tious appendage of Christianity," briefly indi- 
cates the stages, under the ever-intensifying 
spirit of paganism, of that idolatrous practice. 
"The veneration of the cross, and of relics," he 

Ecclesiastical History, vol. 1, pp. 301, 302. 



94 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

says, "was first introduced. The emblem of re- 
demption, or the remains of a saint, were pre- 
served with a superstitious devotion. The 
portrait or the statue of the saint or the 
Saviour succeeded, as more striking memorials 
of holiness or salvation. The painted or 
sculptured effigy, introduced, indeed, with cau- 
tion, was allowed to adorn the oratory, instruct 
the ignorant, warm the frigid, or gratify the 
prepossessions of the convert from gentilism. The 
new portraits and statues, though execu- 
ted in defiance of taste, spread from east to 
west, gratified the imagination of the supersti- 
tious, ornamented the Grecian temple, or Ro- 
man basilic, and finally received the adoration 
of the delighted and degraded votary. m 

Neander, though he never fails, with his 
sweet and generous charity, to make out the 
best case possible for the early Christians, 
evincing no sympathy with any who might be 
inclined, in questionable cases, to find evi- 
dence of their conformity with paganism — 
the light of his own pure and loving spirit 

Variations of Popery, pp. 470, 471. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 95 

constantly softening and relieving the dark- 
est shades of their character and con- 
duct — is yet constrained by his superior re- 
gard for truth, to add the weight of his great 
name, to the overwhelming proof of that un- 
wise, (to use no harsher term,) emulation and 
imitation of the pagans, which so signally 
marked the worship of the post-apostolic church. 
Discussing the Lord's Supper, he speaks of 
"the comparison that was made between the 
Christian worship and the Grecian mysteries" 
and of "the transference of the conception of 
the mysteries to the holy Stepper" and of the 
opinion thus engendered and widely prevalent, 
that "one ought not to speak of those holy 
things before the uninitiated." 1 Speaking of the 
confession of faith of the early Christians as made 
orally, rather than in writing, he says — "In 
later times, a disposition to dip into mysteries 
quite alien from the spirit of the simple gospel, 
which disposition had first found entrance into 
the Alexandrian church, from her leaning to an 
accommodation with the pagan mysteries, and from 

'Hist. Ch. Rel. and Ch., vol. 1, pp. 327, (note,) 

328, 329. 



g6 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

the influence of the Neo-Platonic mysticism, 
gave to this custom the meaning that the most 
sacred things ought not to be entrusted to 
writing — [a hint at the rationale and the source 
of the papal doctrine of ' 'tradition"] — lest they 
should be produced among the uninitiated, and 
thereby become profaned, — while yet the scripture, 
the holiest tradition of the divine, might come 
into the hands of every heathen, while the 
apologist felt no scruples in presenting before 
the heathen, the inmost mysteries of Christian 
doctrine !" In a note upon the passage last 
cited, the great historian further remarks — 
"The like play and parade about mysteries, 
to which more importance came to be at- 
tached tlian they originally possessed, after- 
wards led to the invention of the obscure, vague, 
and unhistorical idea of a disciplina arcani, 
(regimen of mystery,) of which, from its very 
vagueness and want of foundation, men could 
make whatever they pleased." 1 

Now, if the post-apostolic Christians were so 
deeply imbued with the spirit of paganism, 

l Hist. Oh. Eel. andCh., vol. 1., p. 308, 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 97 

and so readily adopted the heathen ideas, 
doctrines, institutions, terms, rites and prac- 
tices, which we have mentioned, with many- 
others which it were tedious to name, is 
it to be at all wondered at, if they de- 
rived the idea of the Kotwawia 3 (the Fellow- 
ship and its Communion^) as it was applied 
to the Lord's Supper, from the same source? 
We are persuaded that no dispassionate and 
candid mind can for a moment think so, 
seeing that such an instance of their adop- 
tion of pagan ideas, and a pagan form of 
expression, is as nothing, when compared 
with other instances of pagan conformity, 
which we have given. 

But, let us look at this matter a little 
more closely. 



XIII. 

CAUSES OF THE SUPERSEDURE. 

PART III. 

H HERE were, among the ancient heathen, 
^f certain societies or brotherhoods, referred 
to by Catullus, Cicero. Tacitus, and others, 
which were called by the Greeks Kovjotviai 7 
and by the Romans Sodalitia, (Fellowships ) 
Cicero, viewing some of them chiefly in 
their social aspect, has called them banquet- 
ing clubs, though he also speaks of their 
feasts in honor of the gods. Tacitus, regard- 
ing them rather in their religious than in 
their social character, or, perhaps, alluding 
to others, has represented them as composed 
of "a sort of priests who formed together 
a college." 

Many of those fellowships had rites and 
ceremonies similar to, if they were not iden- 
tified with, the more august and wide-spread 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 99 

mysteries of which we have already spoken. 
In honor of their particular divinities, they 
celebrated rich and splendid feasts, and per- 
formed other solemn and imposing services. 
Paul and John are supposed by some ex- 
positors to have had in mind~ those fellow- 
ships, when they wrote several striking 
passages of their epistles. 1 

Macknight, after speaking of the use of 
the term Kowwvia, in the New Testament, 
says, — "Kovjwvia also signifies a fellowship or 
company of men, joined together by some 
common bond, for the purpose of obtaining 
certain advantages by means of their union. 
Among the heathen, there were a variety of 
such fellowships, called by the Latins Soda- 
litia. And because many of them were in- 
stituted for celebrating the mysteries or se- 
cret worship of their gods, the particular god 
in honor of whom the fellowship was insti- 
tuted, was considered as the head of it; 
and the author of the benefits which the 
associated expected to derive from their fellow- 

T 8ee 1 Cor. i. 9; 2 Cor. vi. 14-18 ; 1 Jno. i. 3-7. 



100 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

ship in his worship." The same writer also 
says — "In this sense the word fellowship is 
with great propriety applied to the disciples 
of Christ, united by their common faith into 
one society or church, for worshiping the 
only true God, through the mediation of 
His Son Jesus Christ; and for receiving from 
him, through the same mediation, the great 
blessings of protection and direction in the 
present life, and of pardon and eternal 
happiness in the life to come. 7 ' He further 
says, that, "agreeably to this account of the 
Christian fellowship, the apostle contrasts the 
heads thereof with the heads of the heathen 
fellowships." 1 

The feast of the xotvatvta and its accom- 
panying rites, or at least participation in them, 
according to Chandler, took the name of the 
xotvwvia itself "The Greeks likewise," says 
he, in his note on Eph. v. 11, "used the 
word xotvwvta to denote a participation in their 
religious rites and mysteries, and in the bene- 
fits supposed to be procured by them." 2 

J an the Epistles, 1 Jno. i. 3— note 3. 

2 Ib., Jno. i. 3 -note 3; Eph. v. 11— note 1. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. IOI, 

Admission to these "rites and mysteries" 
was regarded as a most distinguished privi- 
lege; and only the initiated, as in the case 
of the more general and famous mysteries, 
were permitted to be present at their ob- 
servance. Multitudes of their pagan votaries 
became Christians. Many of their old ideas 
and old sympathies still remained, and clung 
tenaciously to them. Waddington, alluding to 
this rapid influx of heathen converts into 
the church, says — " These naturally sought in 
the new religion, for any resemblance to the 
popular ceremonies of the old. nx They felt, 
when they gave in their adhesion to Christ, 
that they must have their Christian as they 
had had their pagan xowwvia, and conform 
the feast in honor of Jesus, the head and 
divinity of their new "fellowship," to that 
in honor of their former divinities. Now, 
they found in the church, a ready-made 
"fellowship," and in the Lord's Supper, its 
appropriate feast. And as they had called 
their heathen rites, mysteries, and invested 

l History of the Church, p. 154. 



102 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

them with the utmost sacredness, and had 
excluded from participation in them and the 
feasts with which they were connected, all 
but the initiated; so, after becoming Chris- 
tians, they, and all under their influence, 
rivalling and outdoing the unconverted heathen, 
even in their "greater mysteries," called the 
Lord's Supper, and its "concomitants," not 
only mysteries, but mysteries "terrible," "as- 
tounding," "ineffable" — upon which even the 
hierarchies of heaven could not loo'< with- 
out fear and trembling — and, with an austere 
and rigorous strictness, excluded all but "the 
initiated," (the members of the church,) from 
participation in them. They preached before 
others, sang and read the scriptures before 
them, and gave various instructions to the 
catechumens, or probationers; but the house 
was cleared, with the imperative formula al- 
ready noticed, when they commenced the 
mysterious preliminaries and awful adjuncts 
of the "dreadful feast" of the Church, their 
new xotvwvta, or fellowship. Then, those ini- 
tiated into the "tremendous mysteries" of the 
new religion, the Christian zoiva/vta, after va- 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 103 

rious mystic and magical manipulations, broke 
bread, and drank wine, together. And the 
feast which they thus celebrated, after the 
manner of the pagan xw»(ov{a, readily took 
the name, as before, of the zowwvia itself and 
was called the zoivtovfa, or the Communion. 
And thus the Supper of the Lord came to 
be regarded, in the language of the devout 
and erudite Isaac Taylor, 1 as "a communion with 
the Church" or, "the rite tvhich sealed and sig- 
nified thai communion " rather than as the sacred 
and divine rite which commemorated Christ, and 
the great salvation wrought by him for man- 
kind. 

Now, in view of the instances adduced, of 
emulation and imitation of the heathen, by the 
early Christians, their adoption of pagan ideas, 
terms, doctrines, rites, and ceremonies innu- 
merable ; in view of the usus loquendi of the 
New Testament writers respecting our Lord's 
great commemorative rite, according to which, 
while that rite is called the Lord's Supper,' 1 the 

*Anc. Christ., p. 139. H Cor. xi. !» 



104 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

"breaking of bread, ' n and "the Lord's table"' 1 it 
is never, as a rite, called the communion — ^the 
single instance of the use, in connection with 
the Supper, of a term importing communion, 
having been shown to furnish no warrant for 
the naming of the rite); in view of the fact, 
that the idea of fellowship between believers, 
not prominent, if involved at all, in 1 Cor. x. 
16, 17, is not elsewhere prominent, in connec- 
tion with the ordinance, but that, on the 
other hand, another idea is conspicnously so ; 
in view of the prevalent spirit of self exag- 
geration, of which we have spoken, and from 
which, certainly, the early Christians not more 
than others, were exempt ; in view of all this, 
we respectfully submit, that it is extremely im- 
probable^ if not impossible, that the name in ques- 
tion, the great theological and ecclesiastical mis- 
nomer, as we are constrained to regard it, should 
have corrre from the New Testament, or from 
apostolic usage ; and that it is, therefore, natu- 
rally and logically, (as we think we have shown 
that it is historically), to be traced to the source 
indicated above. 

^cts ii. 42, 46 ; xx. 7, 11. a l Cor. x. 21. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 105 

These views being just, all those who accept 
the renowned declaration of the great Chilling- 
worth,— " The Bible, I say, the Bible only, is 
the religion of Protestants ! m — will consistently 
give its true designation to our Lord's great 
memorial rite, and discourage its supersedure, 
with that of the great object of the rite, by 
an inappropriate and unscriptural appellation, 
against which are so many cogent reasons, 
already to some extent indicated, but which we 
now proceed, a little more formally, yet briefly, 
to state. 

^hilliugworth's Works, vol. 2, p. 410. Oxford Ed. 



^^><^3^^><^_5? 



XIV. 

ARGUMENTS AGAINST SUPERSEDURE. 

jJJHILE, as we have so fully seen, in pre- 
JIP vious sections of this treatise, there is no 
sufficient reason for regarding the Lord's Sup- 
per as the rite of mutual fellowship between 
believers, and of therefore naming it the com- 
munion, there are not wanting reasons, and rea- 
sons of great weight, against it. 

1. The word is ambiguous. In the apos- 
tolic age, it was applied to the contributions 
made by Christians in aid of their poorer 
brethren. "It hath pleased them of Macedo- 
nia and Achaia," says Paul, "to make a certain 
contribution, {v.oivwvia^) for the poor saints which 
are at Jerusalem." 1 It was likewise applied to 
contributions for other purposes. In the third 
and fourth centuries, it was employed to desig- 
nate union in prayer. 1 It was also used to desig- 

1 Rom. xv. 26. 2 C'irtis on Communion, pp. 79, 80. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 107 

nate the performance of ecclesiastical functions} 
And it is still constantly applied to other things 
besides the sacred Supper. We have commu- 
nion with Christ, and with his people, in the 
proper observance of the ordinance of Baptism. 
Why, then, might not that divine rite, as well 
as the Supper, be called the Communion ? The 
breadth and pliability of import and of applica- 
tion which pertain to this term, constitute, of 
themselves, a sufficient reason against the em- 
ployment of it as the fixed and special appellation 
of the Supper, or, indeed, of any single rite or 
service. Such an unwise and illogical as well as 
unscriptural use of it, has caused the utmost 
confusion of ideas in the Christian world, and 
produced an incalculable amount of profitless 
and damaging discussion. 

2. This term, as applied to the Lord's Sup- 
per, cannot, as we have seen, stand the test 
of the axiom laid down at the beginning of 
this discussion. It is not, as a name, strictly 
significant of the thing named. It does not 
properly represent and define it. Instead of 

^Hammond on the Canons, pp. 50, 51. 



108 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

clearly expressing the one essential idea of 
the sacred rite, as a commemoration of 
Christ, his sufferings and death, and the great 
salvation achieved through them for his peo- 
ple, it obscures that idea. Nay, it substitutes 
for it another and totally different idea. 

3. It involves the error of putting the in- 
cidental and the accidental, for the necessary and 
the essential — the error of putting the special for 
the general, the particular for the universal — 
the error of regarding the celebration together, 
by believers, of the Lord's Supper, which is, 
at best, but a particular act of fraternal love 
and mutual recognition, as the one great all- 
embracing demonstration of Christian fellowship 
and sympathy. 

4. Exalting the united celebration of the 
Supper above all other exhibitions of such 
fellowship and sympathy, it most unreason- 
ably, as well as unscripturally, makes it the 
test of their value. The sweetest and the 
noblest communion, is, as we have said, an 
active, intelligent, and voluntary exercise of 
the soul, — a matter of mental and spiritual 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 109 

consciousness. Such communion is enjoyed 
in loving converse and companionship, and in a 
thousand acts of united work and worship. 
But all these, it appears, must go for nothing, 
if there be no united celebration of the 
Lord's Supper, no so-called "communion" at 
the table of the Lord. 

5. While the partaking together of the 
holy feast, by those who celebrate it, is only 
one of the many things in which communion 
with Christ and with his people may be en- 
joyed, and by no means the chief, it is made, 
by the error in question, to usurp and monop- 
olize the character and appellation properly per- 
taining to all the modes and forms of Chris- 
tian communion. 

6. The offspring of error, it has been itself 
fruitful of errors. It has led to grave mis- 
takes respecting the nature, the administration., 
and the proper participants of the sacred Supper. 

(a) Giving, as we have seen, in one aspect 
of the rite, exaggerated views of its observ- 
ance, as a mysterious and inexplicably benefi- 
cial communion with Christ, the false name it 



110 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

bears has led to administrations of the Supper, 
for which there is neither apostolic precept 
nor example. Representing it as possessed 
of essential intrinsic efficacy, and as being, 
in some sort, even necessary to salvation, that 
potent but erroneous appellation has led to 
private administrations of the ordinance to the 
aged and infirm, to the sick and the dying, 
who could not observe it publicly with the 
church, and to both public and private ad- 
minstrations of it, as a means of saving grace 
to the unregenerate and the unbelieving. 
In the early ages, the error which has en- 
shrined itself in that false name, even led to 
the practice of a private self -administration of 
the rite. Basil the Great, living and writing 
in the fourth century, said that in emergen- 
cies, it was lawful for one to administer to 
himself the sacred elements — "to take the 
communion with his own hand." 1 

As we have also seen, it has led, in con- 
nection with other hurtful influences, to greater 

M&isil, IV., 485 — " 7V y v y.mvuwiav Xafifidvstv ry 
ifiia y set))." 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. Ill 

evils still, — to the most monstrous extrava- 
gances and superstitions that could be con- 
ceived; to the Romish dogma of transubstan- 
tiation, with all the ridiculous and shocking 
mummeries and deadly errors of the "mass;" 
to the Lutheran dogma of "consubstantiation;" 
to the scarcely less absurd and preposterous 
conceits of Puseyism; as well as to all the 
errors of those, of whatever party, who sup- 
pose the simple rite to possess, in itself, a 
divine and saving efficacy. 

(b) Regarding the rite, in another aspect 
of it, as essentially an intercommunion of be- 
lievers, it has led, along with erronous con- 
ceptions of the nature of the church, to a 
generally loose and lawless practice respecting 
it, which cannot, we think, be too deeply 
deprecated. It has been assumed that all who 
love the Lord, and who love each other, 
have the right to manifest their love at his 
table, without regard to any other supposed 
scriptural qualification. Hence, persons of all 
the Christian sects, and of no sect at all, 
have been often brought together promiscuously 



112 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

to celebrate the holy ordinance. Thus has the 
rite which Christ bequeathed as a precious 
heritage to his church alone, been taken out of 
the church, and administered indiscriminately 
to heterogeneous masses of men without any 
proper ecclesiastical organization, to the sub- 
version of order, and the sacrifice of the 
purity of the church. 

(c) Combining and exaggerating both the 
classes of views just indicated, the error in- 
volved in the false appellation of the Supper, 
has sometimes led to extraordinary celebrations 
of it by convocations of men and women of 
various nationalities and sects, for which 
there is no scriptural warrant. Great 
mixed multitudes, without any proper church 
organization, improvise or elaborately arrange 
the most imposing observances of the simple 
church rite, as if they were actual churches of 
Christ, and even entitled to more than ordi- 
nary church privileges and honors. 

To many, all this may seem broad, beauti- 
ful, * and eminently Christian; but whatever of 
beauty there may be about it, is a false 
beauty— that of error rather than truth, of dis- 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 113 

order rather than order ; its breadth, liber- 
ality, large-hearted charity, the product rather 
of human sentiment and conventional usage, 
than the fruit of the holy truth and the Holy 
Spirit of God, which, all-consistent and har- 
monious, can never be at issue with them- 
selves. 

7. The error under consideration, while as- 
suming to exalt, really degrades the holy or- 
dinance — while claiming to honor, it dishonors 
our Lord. 

8. Inciting to unworthy clamors for the exhi- 
bition of a spurious liberality, it often leads 
to cruel misrepresentation of many of the 
most conscientious and faithful of the follow- 
ers of Christ 

9. Ostensibly inspired by desire for har- 
mony and peace, for love and sympathy, it 
often excites antipathies, and stirs up bitter- 
ness and strife, between those who are breth- 
ren, and should, at least, be friends. 

10. In fine, failing to realize practically, 
the promised benefits of its theory, this great 



114 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

error causes the world to scoff and gainsay 
obstructs the propagation of the truth, retards 
the progress of the Redeemer's kingdom, and 
hinders the salvation of perishing souls. 

Thus have we shown, by numerous and 
weighty reasons, that, the prime object of the 
Lord's Supper being to commemorate the suffer- 
ings and death of Christ on behalf of his pet 'pie, 
and not to testify their fellowship with each other, 
the holy rite is improperly called, the Com- 
munion. 

If it be said that the establishment of this 
position, effects nothing in favor of those who 
advocate a restricted observance of the Sup- 
per, and nothing in the interest of an enlarged 
Christian charity, inasmuch as it only substi- 
tutes a restricted commemoration for a resfricted 
communion^ we reply — 

First, that we are neither arguing particu- 
larly in the interest of a party, nor in that 
of a universal charity among the followers 
of Christ, whatever may be our own personal 
views and sympathies in those regards; but 
we are arguing specially in the interest of 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 1 5 

what we esteem the truth, being fully as- 
sured that if the truth be vindicated and 
established, neither the interests of any party 
that deserves to be supported, nor those of 
universal Christian charity can be harmed, 
but that they will rather be strengthened 
and supported; for they all alike rest upon 
the truth. 

Secondly, and specially, we reply that, as we 
have seen, the enjoyment of Christian fellowship, 
and the commemoration of Christ, are different 
things, and by no means co-extensive; that 
the former is vastly broader than the latter, 
and does not necessarily involve it; that one 
is a general internal condition and state of the 
soul, while the other is only a particular outward 
action) not different, as such, from a thousand 
other outward actions of believers, which are 
never thought of as tests of mutual recogni- 
tion and fellowship, each one being performed 
under the dictates of private judgment according 

to ITS OWN LAW. 

But this matter will be still clearer, and 
more satisfactory, when we consider, as we 



n6 



THE GREAT MISNOMER. 



now proceed to do, in the light of what has 
already been established, the law governing the 
celebration of the sacred Supper. 




XV. 
LAW OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



PART I. 



J*' ROM the facts and principles set forth in 
^1 the foregoing discussion, in which the Lord's 
Supper has been constantly regarded as pri- 
marily and essentially a feast in commemora- 
tion of Christ and his passion, and subordi- 
nately a feast of spiritual nutrition to those 
who worthily partake of it, the law of the 
Lord's Supper, may be readily determined. 
In the light of those facts and principles, we 
clearly see for whom the sacred feast was 
provided, and who, therefore, are — 

1. Its proper participants. Having for its grand 
object, the commemoration by his people of 
their adored Lord, in his sufferings and death, 
as well as their own spiritual nourishment 
and support, it is obvious that they only can 
properly partake of it. They alone, enjoy 



Il8 THE GREAT MTSNOMEK, 

the supreme benefits of Christ's great sacri- 
fice. They alone have a true appreciation of 
it, a genuine and abiding interest in it. For 
these reasons, they only are qualified intelli- 
gently and heartily to celebrate it. With all 
others, its observance is necessarily nothing 
more than an outward and lifeless formality, 
a heartless ceremonial. 

But, to be a little more specific and par- 
ticular, we remark, in view of the conclusions 
reached in the preceding discussion, that the 
proper participants of the Lord's Supper, are 

(a) Those who love the Lord. Only such can 
sincerely and becomingly commemorate him 
and his great redeeming work. Such were the 
constituents of his first church, the church of 
the apostles, by whom the holy rite was first 
celebrated. 

(b) Those who loyally obey him —striving, hon- 
estly and habitually, to ' • walk in all his or- 
di nances and commandments blameless." 

(c) Those ivho are truly spiritual. Such were 
those who first partook of the Lord's Supper. 
They were those, who, having been "born of 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 119 

the Spirit," were "new creatures in Christ 
Jesus," and "partakers of the divine nature," 
Only such really love and loyally obey him. 
*' The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is 
not subject to the law of God, neither indeed 
can be." 1 Moreover, only spiritual persons can 
appropriate and receive profit from the spirit- 
ual nutriment furnished at the sacred feast. 
To all others, it would be unsuited and inju- 
rious. "The blood, which goes into the 
lungs a dark inert mass, poisoned with car- 
bonic acid, comes from them of a bright 
scarlet, having parted with its poison,, and 
absorbed the oxygen of the atmosphere. It 
Is thus vitalized, and made capable of sus- 
taining life. So in the gospel the sacraments 
need to be vitalized by a living faith, in the 
experience of each professor, without which 
they only carry with them poison and death 
into every ramification of the spiritual system 
to which they extend." 2 

As we have in another place intimated, some 
have recommended the holy rite as a means 
of grace to the unregenerate and the unbe- 

l Eom. viii., 7. 2 Curtis' Prog. Bap. Prine., p. 74. 



120 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

lieving. Others have administered it, we have 
also said, as the means of salvation to the 
sick and the dying. Both these classes of 
teachers, misapprehend the real nature and 
design of the ordinance, and egregiously per- 
vert it. Neither reason nor scripture sanctions 
their teachings. Such teachings may be 
prompted by zeal, but it is "zeal without 
knowledge.' 7 They may be inspired by hu- 
mane and generous feeling, but it is feeling 
neither produced nor guided by a just appre- 
ciation of divine truth, or by a proper esti- 
mate of man's essential character and real 
condition. 

Though in another place he teaches, with 
strange inconsistency, a different doctrine, 
Knapp, after speaking of the Supper as "a 
significant sermon on the death of Jesus" is con- 
strained, .by the force of truth, which he 
manifestly loves, and which, for the most part, 
he ably advocates, to say that the Supper 
"requires, in order to a proper celebration of 
it, a personal experience of the benefits of this 
death." 1 

Christ. Theol., p. 499 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 121 

The Lord's Supper, though involving the 
use of physical elements, is a symbolic spirit- 
ual rite. What congeniality, then, can the 
carnal heart have with it? What susceptibility 
of impression by it? What power of appre- 
ciation and appropriation of its benefits ? Can 
the mere material substances of bread and 
wine, received by the dying unbeliever, alter 
his spiritual character or state ? Can these sub- 
stances, received by the carnal man, whether 
sick or in health, inspire the heart that is 
enmity against God, with a true and supreme 
love for him? What talismanic power of 
matter over mind, surpassing all the wonders 
of Greek or Arabian fiction, were this! What 
a mighty and marvelous opus operatum! 



XVI. 
LAW OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

PART II. 

j[jERSONS having the qualities above indi- 
4f cated, in order to be rightful participants 
of the Lord's Supper, must also be - 

(d) Members of the visible church. Whilst it 
is clear, from the essential nature and design 
of the Lord's Supper, as we have considered 
it, that only the real followers • of Christ are 
entitled to the privileges of the sacred feast, 
it is also clear, from the simple scriptural ac- 
count which we have given of its first cele- 
bration, that it is designed for them, even, 
only in an organized or church capacity. Jesus 
instituted the Supper with his twelve apostles. 
As a sort of close corporation, they have 
sometimes been called the college of apostles. 
We have no objection to the term. They 
were a college. But that college was also 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 23 

a church. It was the first church — the church 
instituted by Christ himself, and over which 
he personally presided. Its constituents were 
his hxXrjfTca, his little but divinely honored 
assembly, called out by himself from the rest 
of men, to be about him, devoutly to worship 
him, to observe his ordinances, to transact 
the business of his kingdom, to establish it, 
and to extend it throughout the world. 

Having adduced weighty and conclusive 
evidence to prove that the apostles had been 
previously baptized, Wiberg says — "That the 
eleven at the institution of the Supper, com- 
posed a Christian church, is also certain. By 
a church of Christ is meant, according to the 
Augsburg Confession, Art. 7th., 'a congrega- 
tion of holy persons, in which the gospel is 
rightly taught, and the sacraments rightly ad- 
ministered.' Now we ask, Was not the gospel 
rightly taught by our Lord and Master ? Were 
not the disciples rightly baptized, and did 
they not receive the true Supper from its 
Institutor? As this cannot be denied, it fol- 
lows that the Supper, even on this occasion, 



124 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

was celebrated in common by a regular church 
of Christ." 1 

There were other disciples besides the apos- 
tles; ' 'above five hundred," Paul tells us. 2 But 
they were not formally connected with the 
apostles as a body, a church. Those disci- 
ples loved their Lord. Many of them would 
have died for him. But they were, as yet, 
unorganized, and without the pale of the 
church visible. Hence they were not at the 
Supper. Not even Mary, the mother of Jesus, 
nor the other holy women who so devoutly 
and lovingly ministered to him, nor the sera- 
phic Stephen, probably already a believer, 3 and 
soon — after sealing his glorious testimony with 
his blood --to follow his divine Lord into his 
heavenly kingdom. 

Subsequently, these disciples were organized, 
by union with the church of the apostles, 
which constituted with them the church at 
Jerusalem. Then, at once, as formal and 

Christ. Bap., pp. 295, 296. 2 1 Cor., xv., 6. 

3 Epiphanius, it is said, with whom Fleming, in his 
Christology, agrees, regarded him as one of the 
"Seventy." 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. I 25 

regular members of the church, they partook 
of the Supper of the Lord, commemorating, 
with the apostles, his sufferings and death, in 
the manner, and for the purpose, which he 
had prescribed. They assembled on the first 
day of the week, and on other occasions — 
daily, indeed, at first — to worship him, and to 
break the bread which represented his body 
broken for them, and to drink the wine which 
symbolized his blood shed on their behalf. 

We never, however, read of a portion of 
them, whether large or small, coming together 
apart from the organized body, the church proper, 
to solemnize the Supper. It was not then, 
nor is it now, competent for two, or ten, 
half a hundred, or more, professed believers, 
casually coming together, to improvise, if we 
may so speak, a celebration of the holy rite. 
Neither was it then, nor is it now, compe- 
tent for the administrators of the rite, to give 
the holy Supper to individuals or companies of 
their brethren, apart from the church. 

Referring to the account given of the Lord's 
Supper, by those early fathers, Justin and 
Irenaeus, and to the origin of the practice 



I 26 THE GREAT MISNOMER. 

by private parties, and by individuals absent 
from the formal celebration of the rite by 
the church, of partaking of "elements pre- 
viously consecrated" in the church, Neander 
says — "The idea at bottom, was, that a com- 
munion could properly have its right signifi- 
cance, only in the midst of a church; the com- 
munion of persons absent, of individuals, was 
to be considered, therefore, as only a continu- 
ation of that communion of the whole body of the 
church : n 

Christ, Creator and upholder of all things, 
has established perfect system and order 
throughout his vast material rea'm, and they 
are always maintained. Can anything less be 
expected in his more glorious spiritual realm ? 
Having established a sublime, however simple 
and outwardly humble rite, to be observed 
by his people, throughout all generations, in 
loving memory of himself, he left it not with- 
out fixed and clearly defined law, to protect 
it from neglect and corruption, irregularity 
and disorder. 

'Hist. Ch. Rel. and Ch., vol. 1, p. 332— note. 



. XVII 
LAW OF THE LORD'S SUPPER, 

PART III. 

JjAVING seen that in consonance with the 
Sff nature and design of the Lord's Supper, 
as we have viewed it, the true people of God 
are the only rightful participants of it; and 
that even they, as isolated individuals, or 
loose, unorganized, promiscuous companies, 
cannot properly partake of it, but can do so, 
in an orderly and decorous manner, accord 
ing to the teachings of Christ and his apos- 
tles, only as an organized body or church, we 
see, in the light of the same divine teaching, 
who are the proper constituents of such a body, 
and therefore qualified and entitled to par- 
ticipate of the sacred Supper. They are — 

(e) Baptized believers — those who, having 
believed in Christ, have publicly confessed 
him, and taken the outward as well as inward 



128 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

posture and character of his friends and follow- 
ers ; those who, assuming the badge of the Chris- 
tian brotherhood, the uniform of the soldiery 
of the great Captain, have "put him on in 
baptism" — those, in a word, who, upon a 
credible profession of justifying faith, have 
been baptized into the name of the Father, 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Such were the 
first participants of the rite ; the constituents 
of the first church, the church of the apostles. 
The church of Christ is spoken of in the 
New Testament as a body, of which he is the 
head, and of which he is also the informing 
soul. Indeed, the union between him and his 
people is regarded as so close and intimate, 
that they are constantly represented as one. 
They are assimilated to him, spiritually homo- 
geneous with him, have his mind, breathe 
his spirit. Having been "accepted in the 
Beloved," they are loyal to him as their 
King, obedient to him as their Master, faith- 
ful to him as their Friend. Such were those 
who composed the church personally consti- 
tuted by Christ himself, and of which he 
was the divine Pastor. They gave every 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. I'2g 

'-evidence that was possible, of their devotion 
and consecration to him. They left all and 
followed him; they encountered hardship and 
toil for him; they did lovingly and loyally aM 
that he bade them do; they braved persecu- 
tion, peril and death for him. 

John, the harbinger of Jesus, had bidden 
men repent and be baptized, believing on 
him who was to come. Multitudes obeyed 
-him. Some of the apostles, as is generally 
conceded, were of the number, and there 
is reason for believing that others, if not all. 
were. Robert Hall, speaking of the apostles, 
in connection with this matter, but denying 
that John's and Christian baptism were iden- 
tical, says— ci It is almost certain that some, 
probably most of them, had been baptized 
by John." 1 

But, if any of them immediately obeyed 
not John, there is still no reason to question 
the fact of their baptism. We know that 
Christ preached substantially as John preach ed^ 
and like him baptized; that he everywhere 

a HalPs Works, vol. 1, \\ 303. 



I30 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

commanded men not only to repent and be- 
lieve the gospel, but also to be baptized; and 
that he, through his disciples, actually admin- 
istered the rite to great multitudes — to more 
even than did John, Would he fail to urge 
upon his chosen and most highly favored ones, 
the sacred duties he so strenuously enjoined 
upon others? Or, would they, who had shown, 
as we have seen, such wondrous devotion, 
resist his will in respect to any of his in- 
junctions; and, especially, while so earnestly 
pressing those injunctions upon others, as they 
all unquestionably did. No one can believe 
it. He bade all men repent, believe, and be 
baptized. He said to his apostles, in giving 
them the great commission — "Go ye, there- 
fore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in 
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and 
of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe 
all things whatsoever I have commanded you: 
and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto 
the end of the world. Amen." 1 Or, as it is* 
rendered by Mark — " Go ye into all the 

IMatt, xxviii., 19, 20. 



THEOLOGICAL ANT> ECCLESIASTICAL. 131 

world, and preach the gospel to every creature. 
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; 
but he that believeth not shall be damned." 1 
Now, the principle of the commision, as it re- 
spects baptism, was ever the same. It applied 
before the formal annunciation of that great 
-charter, as well as after it; at the beginning of 
Christ's ministry, as well as at its close. It 
-bound the earlier disciples of Jesus, as well as 
those of a later day. None accepted and 
•submitted to the will of their divine Lord, 
whether formally or informally expressed, with 
with greater alacrity than did the apostles. 
None were wiser than they. And they would 
not fail to add to the force of their precepts 
-respecting baptism, the weight of their own 
example. 

' 'When our Lord himself," says Wiberg, 
''submitted to baptism in order to 'fulfill all 
righteousness;' when he at the same time de- 
clared that his followers, together with him, 
ought to fulfill the same righteousness, or all 
the several appomtments of the heavenly Father; 
when he, too, declared t n at baptism was a 

1 Mark, xvL, 15, 16. 



1^2 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

part of the 'counsel of God, 7 and expressed 
his sore displeasure with such as 'rejected 
this counsel of God against themselves, being: 
not baptized f of John, (Luke viii. 30); when 
John the Baptist 'was sent from God, ta 
make ready a people prepared for the Lord/ 
(Luke L 17, John i. 6), and for this pur- 
pose 'baptized with the baptism of repentance,' 
(Acts xix. 4); when the first disciples of 
Christ also had been the disciples of John. 
(John i. 37, Acts i. 22); and when they 
themselves, on the command of our Saviour,, 
baptized others — is it indeed conceivable that 
they would have neglected or refused to be 
baptized: 11 

The objection sometimes urged, that the 
baptism of John, and even that of Christ 
himself, (through his disciples), was not Chris- 
tian baptism, has always seemed to us most 
singular and unreasonable, and utterly without 
weight. Dagg, speaking of this matter, says — 
"The first Supper was administered to the 
apostles, Some of these had been baptized 

l Christ. Bap., pp. 294, 295. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 33 

by John ; and since the disciples made by 
Jesus in his personal ministry, were also bap- 
tized, we are warranted to conclude that all 
the apostles had been baptized. If it be denied 
that John's baptism, and the baptism admin- 
istered under the immediate direction of Christ, 
during his personal ministry, were Christian 
baptism, we call for proof. * * When Paul 
was made an apostle, before he entered on 
his work, he was commanded to be baptized. 
From some cause, the other apostles were 
not under this obligation. We account for the 
difference, by the supposition that they had 
already received what was substantially the same 
as the baptism administered to Paul." 1 

To the same purport is the language of the 
distinguished German theologian, Knapp, whom 
we have already, in other connections, sev- 
eral times cited. "The practice of the first 
Christian church, " says he, "confirms the 
point that the baptism of John was consid- 
ered essentially the same with Christian bap- 
tism. For those who acknowledged that they 
had professed, by the baptism of John, to be- 

^anual of Theology, Part II, pp. 214, 215, 



r^4 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

lieve in Jesus as the Christ, and who m 
consequence of this had become, in fact, his 
disciples, and had believed in him, were not, 
in a single instance, baptized again into Christ, 
because this was considered as having been 1 
already done. Hence we do not find that 
any apostle, or any other disciple of Jesus, 
was the second time baptized; not even that. 
Apollos mentioned in Acts xviii. 25, because 
he had before believed in Jesus as Christ, 
although he had received only the baptism 
of John." 1 

To the above cited authorities, of the 
highest class, which might be increased in- 
definitely, we add the great name of Turrettin, 
whose works are amongst the ablest of the 
learned productions of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, and a standard in some of our best 
theological institutions. He maintains, with 
great learning and force of argument, that 
"the baptism of John was the same essential- 
ly with that of Christ," or Christian baptism. 2 ' 

Christ. Theol. r p. 485. 

2 Op., torn. III., DeBap.,Qu8est^xvi.,jx/ss/w. Ed- 
inburgh Ed, 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 135 

Thus we see that the members of Christ's 
first church, as constituted by Himself, were 
all baptized believers. The later members of 
that church were like their -elder brethren. 
So were those of all the other churches con-^ 
stituted by the apostles and their coadjutors-. 

The divine record assures us that they re- 
pented, believed, and were baptized; then 
were added to the company of the disciples, 
that is, were received into the church; 
then broke bread with their brethren, in the 
regular and formal observance of the Lord's 
Supper. 

That this was the invariable order of proce- 
dure, is so clear to every earnest and thought- 
ful reader of the New Testament, that we 
think it wholly unnecessary to attempt any 
formal proof, or to fortify our statement by 
quotations from the sacred record. 

Now, the apostolic churches are the ac- 
knowledged models of all properly constituted 
churches. Such churches, therefore, whenever 
or wherever established, are composed of bap- 
tized believers. 

From the very nature and design of the 



136 THE GREAT MISNOMER. 

Lord's Supper, then, as understood by those 1 
among whom it was first established, and by 
whom it was first observed, it is clear that 
none can, in an orderly and scriptural man- 
ner, celebrate the holy rite, but the true fol- 
lowers of Christ, constituted into regular churches. 
And it is equally clear that none can be con- 
stituted into such churches, but those who- 
have been baptized, upon a profession of faith,, 
by a duly qualified administrator of the rite. 
From all which, it is obvious, that none but 
baptized believers, formally connected with the 
church, can properly partake of the Supper 
of the Lord. "To every man, who contents 
himself with a plain view of the subject," says- 
that eminent Presbyterian theologian, Dr. Dick, 
"and has no purpose to serve by subtleties 
and refinements, it will appear that baptism 
is as much the initiating ordinance of the 
Christian, as circumcision was of the Jewish 
dispensation. An uncircumcised man was 
not permitted to eat the passover, and an 
unbaptized man should not be permitted to 
partake of the eucharist.'* 1 

^Lecture* on Theology, vol. 2, p. 42L 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 37 

Baptism, thus going before the celebration 
of the sacred Supper, according to scriptural 
order, also precedes it, in the wry nature of 
things. Baptism symbolizes regeneration, the 
new birth, the beginning of the new spiritual life. 
The Lord's Supper symbolizes the continued 
nourishment and support of that life. As, there- 
fore, birth naturally precedes the nourishment 
and support of life, so baptism naturally pre- 
cedes participation of the Lord's Supper. 

That the baptism which the first followers 
of Christ received, was immersion, is clear 
from the force of the Greek terms expressive 
of the rite, and of its administration; from 
the circumstances, clearly implying immersion, 
attending its observance in the apostolic age; 
from the symbolic import of the rite, as a 
death, burial, and resurrection; from the 
practice of all Christendom for many ages; 
from that of the Greek church of our own times, 
whose language, though much modified by time, 
is substantially that in which the New Testa- 
ment was written; and, finally, from the 
common consent of the ablest and most learned 
men, of both ancient and modern times. 



XVIII. 
LAW OF THE LORD'S SUPPER, 

PART IV. 

N the light of our discussion we further 
see what are— 

2. The essential circumstances, of a true scrip- 
tural observance of the rite. Such observance 
is the simple reception, by baptized believers, 
of bread and wine — fittingly representing the 
body of Jesus broken, and his blood shed 
for them — the reception not of bread alone, 
as by the popish laity, in the unworthy ob- 
servance of a sacrilegiously mutilated rite; 
but the reception of both the blessed symbols, 
the bread and the wine, representing, in their 
united and divine significance, the very sub- 
stance and vital principle of the whole 
Christ, the whole human and Divine Being. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 39 

The reception of these significant and strik- 
ing symbols — - 

(a) In the church publicly assembled. And 
where else than among those who constitute 
the church, which is his body ; and by whom 
else than by those who are the very members 
of his body, and for whom his life was of- 
fered up, should they be received? 

(b) Not in private houses by individual be- 
lievers, or by companies of Christians apart 
from the churchy even though they be mem- 
bers of it. The Christian pastor may not 
administer the sacred elements, privately, to 
one or more members of his flock, even 
though they be aged or invalid believers, 
unable to attend upon the public ministra- 
tions of the sanctuary; to one in imminent 
danger of death; or to a few Christian in- 
dividuals transiently sojourning, or perma- 
nently residing, in a private family, unless 
they there constitute a church, like that in 
Aquila and Priscilla's, or Nymphas' house. 
Christ will, himself, visit the poor, and the 
sick, and the dying, and the strangers within 



140 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

his gates, when they call upon him ; and succor, 
and solace, and save them. He will come 
to them, and "sup with them," in their 
own homes, and bless them with as sweet 
and rich a feast as any which they could 
enjoy, formally, with their brethren, "in the 
midst of the great congregation." 

But the observance of Christ's ordinances 
is to be regarded, not so much as a matter 
of personal gratification, as of personal obliga- 
tion; not so much as a spiritual luxury fur- 
nished for our enjoyment, as a spiritual ali- 
ment, prescribed and prepared, under proper 
conditions, for our nourishment. If one is un- 
able, from the force of circumstances which 
he cannot control, to receive the rite of 
baptism in the manner in which it has been 
divinely appointed to be received, he is free 
from its obligation altogether, and may dis- 
pense even with its benefits. He is not re- 
quired to submit to some modification of it, 
that may be more convenient. "After bap- 
tism, in itself considered, and simply as an 
opus operatum," says Knapp, "came to be re- 
garded as essential to salvation, the question 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 141 

was started — Whether, in the want of water, 
baptism could be performed with any other 
material; e. g., wine, milk, or sand? The 
question must be answered in the negative, 
since to do this would be contrary to the 
institution of Christ. For any one to be 
prevented, necessarily, from being baptized, 
does not subject him to condemnation, but 
only the wilful and criminal refusal of this 
rite." 1 

The same law holds in respect to the 
Lord's Supper. Nothing can be substituted 
for the bread that appropriately represents 
Christ's body, nothing for the wine that sym- 
bolizes his blood. When these cannot be 
obtained, the obligation to observe the ordi- 
nance ceases, so long as the insuperable dif- 
ficulty remains. And so, too, if from en- 
forced absence, through sickness, the infirmities 
of age, or any other cause, a member of 
the church be unable to participate, with the 
church, in the observance of the sacred rite, 
he incurs no guilt from its non-observance. 
And though he may suffer some loss of per- 

1 Christ. Theol., p. 486. 



142 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

sonal enjoyment, and perhaps of substantial 
profit, through the disability that deprives him of 
participation, with his brethren, in the joyous 
feast, he may not indemnify himself for the 
loss, by a violation of the law and order of 
God's house, in privately and irregularly par- 
taking of the sacred elements. 

Although ''the obligation of keeping the 
passover — the type of the Lord's Supper— was 
so strict, that whoever should neglect it was 
condemned to death, (Numb, ix., 13)," yet 
4 i those who had any lawful impediment, as 
& journey, sickness, or uncleanness, voluntary 
or involuntary," might "defer its celebration 
till the second month of the ecclesiastical 
year;" when they might be able to observe 
it, according to its prescribed conditions. 1 

The first Supper, we have seen, was cele- 
brated in the churchy and by its members alone — 
not even the mother of Jesus, or the other 
holy women who so loved and served him, 
or the seventy evangelists whom he had sent 
forth to propagate his gospel, being invited 
to it. And, as we have also seen, there is 

1 Enc. Rel. Knbwl., Art. Passover, 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 43 

no instance, in the apostolic age, of its being 
observed by others than members of the church; 
or by them, apart from the church. For any 
different practice, there is neither apostolic 
precept nor example. Such practice rests, 
in so far as it prevails at all, upon nothing 
better than mere human theories' and sym- 
pathies, inspired by misconception of the na- 
ture and design of the blessed ordinance ; 
mingled, in many instances, with a mislead- 
ing and deeply harmful superstition. 

(c) Not — apart from the church, as such— 
in public convocations, made up of mixed mul- 
titudes from all quarters of the land, even 
though they love the Lord Jesus, and have 
assembled to concert measures for the ad- 
vancement of the interests of his kingdom in 
the world. The Lord's Supper is not to be 
carried out of the church. Beyond its sacred 
precincts, his table is not to be spread. 
Such a convocation, though it may be very 
august and imposing, though it may consist 
of members of the churches, and include their 
greatest and most illustrious leaders, is not 



544 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

itself a church^ And there is no more dis- 
paragement of those who compose such a 
body, in withholding the Lord's Supper from 
them, than there was disparagement of the 
"Seventy," when Christ withheld from them, 
(as not formal members of the church which 
he had organized), the sacred symbols of his 
body and blood. 

Doubtless it might sometimes have been 
agreeable to the ancient Israelites, in some 
of their more warmly patriotic, and fraternal, 
and festive moods, to celebrate the feast of 
the passover, (especially on extraordinary oc- 
casions,) in larger and more promiscuous 
companies than those of the private families, 
to which its observance was confined, and in 
a more public and imposing way than that 
prescribed by the law of Moses, But, loyal 
to the divine authority under which they 
were placed, they never felt justified in tak- 
ing such a liberty with the holy rite. They 
never so perverted it as to carry it out of 
the family, (beautiful image of the church,) 
or otherwise materially departed from its di- 
vinely-appointed conditions. Shall Christians, 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 45 

professing a heartier and more intelligent 
loyalty towards their Lord, than his ancient 
people usually displayed, be less submissive 
to divine law, less observant of divine order, 
in respect to the Lord's Supper, than were 
those "stiff-necked" ancient people, in respect 
to the feast which was but the shadoiv of the 
richer one ordained by Christ? 




XIX. 
LAW OF THE LORD'S SUPPER, 

PART V- 

I UST views of the Lord's Supper, enabling 
$\ us to determine its proper participants, 
and the essential circumstances of its adminis- 
tration, enable us also to determine — 

3. The rightful custodians and administrators 
of the* rite. 

There are those who think that Christ 
left his church without a fixed and deter- 
minate polity. But we cannot suppose that 
he, who is the wisest of law-givers and 
rulers, would set up the most important 
establishment ever erected on the earth, and 
leave the conservation of its character, the 
preservation of its integrity, and the ad~ 
ministration of its affairs, to be deter- 
mined, without welhdefined law, and clearly 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 47 

designated administrators of that law, by the 
infirmities of human character and temper, and 
by the ever-fluctuating states and conditions 
of human society. Human governors are 
wiser than that. The wisdom of the Divine 
Governor surely does not fall below the 
human standard. Immutable law, perfect or- 
der, as we have said, in another connection, 
reign throughout Jehovah's natural kingdom. 
There is perfect adjustment of means to 
ends. Every necessary agent is appointed, 
its place fixed, its functions defined, the 
proper relations, gradations, and inter-depen- 
dencies, all determined. A wise system of 
supremacy on the one hand, and of subor- 
dination on the other, is established and 
uniformly maintained. x\nd so, whether it 
be always recognized or not, is it in his 
spiritual kingdom. The church is a body 
constituted and governed upon well estab- 
lished and ascertainable principles, though, 
like those of the natural world, some of 
them may, at times, elude the view of those 
who do not diligently search for them. The 
character of the constituent elements of the 



148 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

church, the position, duties, and qualifications 
of its officers, are defined; its true sphere 
assigned, its functions determined, the law 
of its life fixed, the spirit and the modes 
of its operation indicated, and the rules, by 
which it is to be guided and controlled, au- 
thoritatively announced. 

Christ having made his church the pillar 
and ground of his truth, has committed that 
truth, with all the ordinances of his house, 
to her charge. She is its depositary and 
custodian. For fidelity to her precious trust, 
he holds her to a high and solemn account- 
ability. He gave her, at the first, his holy 
Supper; saying to those, who, as her proper 
constituents, partook of the divine repast, Do 
this, in remembrance of me; for as often 
as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do 
show the Lord's death, //// he come. Thus 
did he give the rite to them and their 
rightful successors, in perpetuity. Theirs at 
the first, it is theirs still, a sacred charge, 
an inalienable possession. 

Having said that "baptism and the Lord's 
Supper are committed to the custody and 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 49 

guardianship of the visible churches of Christ, 
as such, which are the trustees, the admin- 
istrators of these ordinances, by a divine ap- 
pointment," Prof. Curtis proceeds further to 
remark — "It must be quite evident that they 
are committed to the care of some agents. 
They are not simply enjoined in the Bible, 
and left without any to defend them against 
abuses and attacks, or to exhibit their divine 
authority, and the duty of submitting to 
them, none being responsible for adminis- 
tering them to proper subjects, and to those 
alone. On whom does this responsibility of- 
ficially devolve? We know that one import- 
ant duty of the visible churches of Christ 
is to uphold the doctrines of the gospel, and 
to spread them before the whole world. It 
is thus that they exhibit their character, as 
the golden candlesticks supporting the light 
of divine truth in the world, trimmed and 
filled with the oil of grace by the hand of 
Christ himself. But is it only doctrines that 
give light? Is there nothing luminous in the 
ordinances of the gospel ? To whom, then, 
is the maintenance of these institutions to be 



150 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

committed? Whose duty is it to uphold and 
to administer them but- those churches of Christ 
regularly constituted, according to the insti- 
tutions of the gospel?" 1 

But the church has divinely-appointed offi- 
cers, through whom she act's. The chief of 
these are her bishops or pastors. They are 
her ministers. It is their function, as the 
servants of Christ, and the servants of his 
church, to dispense the truth, and to ad- 
minister the ordinances. To them, as the 
representatives of Christ, the exponents of 
his character and offices, the expounders of 
his word, and the administrators of the rites 
which he has instituted, is assigned the 
honor of presiding at the sacred Supper, and 
of dispensing to their brethren, the heavenly 
viands of their Master's board; as, to them, 
and to them only, is assigned the duty and 
the honor of administering the kindred rite 
of baptism. "In the ancient Christian church, 
the Lord's Supper was as regularly admin- 
istered by the teachers, as baptism. Justin 

l Progress of Baptist Principles, pp. 296, 297. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. X 5 I 

the martyr, (Apol. 1. 85, s-eq.,) says that the 
x t o<>z<T7d)Tzz, (heads of affairs,)—//^ bishops or 
pastors— consecrated and distributed the ele- 
ments; and Tertullian, (De Cor. Mil.,) says, 
li Nec de aliorum manu quam praesidentium 
sumimus" — "We do not receive [the elements'] 
from the hand of others than the presiding 
officers" — -the bishops or pastors? 

No private member, or deacon, even, may, 
then, administer the sacred rite, unless under 
extraordinary circumstances, especially appoint- 
ed by the church, in which case he should be 
regarded as, for the time, endowed with pas- 
toral functions. 

The Lord's Supper, committed, at the first, 
to the apostolic church, remains with her still, 
a precious possession, a sacred trust. Al- 
though sometimes obscured by the thick clouds 
of her "great tribulation," that beauteous 
"bride of heaven," that glorious "spouse of 
Christ," is still in the world, brightened, as 
well as purified, by her *' martyrs' fires ; ? - 
strengthened by her hard and trying disci- 

1 Knapp's Christ Theol., p. 503. 



152 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

pline. Against her the gates of hell have 
never ceased to wage furious warfare. But 
they have not prevailed. She is invincible. 
Onset after onset, against her heaven-con- 
structed bulwarks, has been beaten back. 
They are impregnable. Greater is He that 
is for her, than all they that are against 
her. And, at the last, he will bring her tri- 
umphant and all-glorious out of the fierce con- 
flict. Right faithfully, by His grace, lias she 
clung to and preserved the heavenly treasure 
committed to her trust, through fire and flood ; 
through terrible tempests of persecution — 
confiscation of goods, banishment, imprison- 
ments, tortures, blood and death. Let the 
memory of the past, give hope and inspira- 
tion for the future." Having loved His own, 
He will love them to the end. 

Whatever the pressure of misrepresentation, 
reproach, obloquy, her children may have to 
bear, for fidelity to their adored Lord, to his 
truth, and to the ordinances of his house, 
let them not be discouraged; but, possessing 
themselves in faith and patience, let them remem- 
ber that for Him and for them, their saintly and 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. I 53 

heroic fathers endured immensely more, and 
yet were sustained. And so, emulating those 
of whom the world was not worthy, let them 
"keep the ordinances," as they have been 
delivered unto them; keep them in their di- 
vine purity and integrity, in their divine idea, 
in their very name — as important to the just 
conception and faithful conservation of that 
idea — in fine, keep them in all their celestial 
beauty and completeness, and in all their 
scriptural requisitions. 




XX. 

CORRECTION OF THE MISNOMER, 

|j HOSE Christian people, who, in our judg- 
^f ment, have been most scriptural and con- 
sistent in their principle and practice respect- 
ing the Lord's Supper, have encountered great 
reproach, because of their very devotion to 
truth and duty, in this regard. And we can- 
not too much admire the Christian manliness 
with which they have withstood the formida- 
ble odium theologicum thus incurred. The un- 
scriptural and unreasonable notions engendered 
and propagated by the erroneous appellation 
of the sacred Supper, to which we so strongly 
demur, have greatly increased that odium. 
They have presented those faithful followers 
of Christ in the false light of seeming to 
withhold, with selfish and bigoted exclusive- 
ness, all Christian 7-ecognition and communion 
from others, while, in fact, with broad and 
generous charitv, thev extend to them a warm 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 55 

and hearty sympathy, in all matters of com- 
mon Christian faith and practice, join with 
them in a thousand acts of personal fellow- 
ship, and* united service of. their common 
Lord, and only make a firm and consistent 
pi'actical protest, as well as theoretical, against 
what they conscientiously believe to be their 
errors. 

Let, then, those especially, who have suf- 
fered so much from the improper application 
of a noble term, do all they can to correct 
and remedy it. Let them, so far as may 
be practicable, disuse and banish from their 
theological and ecclesiastical vocabulary, the 
erroneous and unfortunate designation. Very 
justly has it been said, that " words are 
things." Most potent things, indeed, they are. 
They embody and perpetuate, they clothe and 
send forth, the "ideas" that "rule the world.' 7 
They are, in the words of the great Dram- 
atist, "the very coinage of the brain." 
They carry with them, all that is strongest 
and most sublimated in the soul. Justly says 
Isaac Barrow, himself a masterly user of 
words, because a masterly thinker — "There 



1 56 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

is a strange enchantment in words; which, being 
(although with no great color of reason), as- 
sumed, do work on the fancies of men, 
especially of the weaker sort. * * Words, 
innocently or carelessly used, are, by inter- 
pretation, extended to signify great matters, 
or what you please." 1 With words, "bless we 
God, even the Father;" and with words, 
"curse we men, which are made after the 
similitude of God." 2 And, because they ren- 
der the whole soul, mind and heart, Jesus 
says — "By thy words thou shalt be justified, 
and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." 3 
Reverently addressing God, the Psalmist says — 
1 ' Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy 
name." 4 And when the infinite, invisible, 
incomprehensible God, would render himself to 
men, and to angels, and to the whole uni- 
verse, he incarnated his Son, under the title 
of his "Word" — the transcendent, all-glorious 
"Logos" — the expression of the Divine Rea- 
son, and Love, and Power, and whole Per- 

^arrow's Works, vol. 3, Treat, of Pope's Suprem., 
p. 201, and p. 200. -. James Hi., 9. 3 Matt. xii., 37. 
4 P*. exxxviii. 2. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 57 

sonality. 1 Oh, words! they are the great power 
of earth and heaven. By them, both were 
made. By them, both consist. They fill the 
skies with light and joy. They fill earth with 
truth or falsehood, love or hate. 

That word, so full of the divine amenities 
and sweetest sympathies of the soul, so full 
of its noblest charities, so redolent of friend- 
ship and of brotherliness, of tenderness and 
love, that — as we have already so often called 
it — beautiful word, "communion," has cast a 
spell upon the Christian world, a spell that 
it will be hard, if possible, ever to break. 
Like many another lovely and seductive form, 
it has led away captive, those who have been 
too much enamored of it, into temptation, and 
error, and sin. With a voice bewitching as 
that of the syren on the enchanted isle of 
Calypso, whose resistless fascination, as the 
poets tell us, lured many a hapless mariner 
from his true bearings, into the maelstroms 
of deceitful seas, or into the no less treach- 
erous and destructive vortices of an illicit 

'Jno. i. 14; 1 Tim. iii., G. 



158 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

love, it has charmed many a susceptible and 
enthusiastic Christian, glowing with all the 
warmth of a universal sympathy, from the 
divinely-ordained order and decorum of the 
church of God, into a looseness and lawless- 
ness of procedure, as injurious to that, as it is 
dishonoring to Him. Because of its unwar- 
ranted, unscriptural, often uncharitable, and, 
we fear, sometimes sinister use, in connection 
with the most touching and affecting ordinance 
of God's house, that sweet and beautiful word 
has been, we honestly believe, more hurtful to 
the honor and highest interests of that house, 
more damaging and weakening to those most 
devoted to it, than many an infidel sophist, or 
malignant persecutor. 

The distinctive principles of those followers of 
Christ, who more strictly than many others 
construe the word of God, and, we think, 
more vigilantly and faithfully guard the ordi- 
nances, find general favor, under auspicious 
circumstances, and make rapid progress among 
the people, unless forestalled, or otherwise ob- 
structed, by outward and untoward influences. 
See how, in the first age, despite the leagued 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 159 

opposition of human and of diabolical enemies, 
they overspread the world ! See how, under 
the happy auspices of American liberty, they 
have advanced in our own land ! And no 
wonder ! For those principles are the noblest 
and divinest that have ever been promulgated 
among men, and should be unspeakably dear 
to every human heart. They appeal with the 
utmost eloquence and force to the deepest and 
strongest sentiments of our nature. 

That we may have a proper appreciation of 
the position and spirit of those who have 
always held them, and of their relation to the 
leading ideas and general purpose of this whole 
discussion, let us briefly glance at those prin- 
pies. For the sake of greater symmetry of 
statement and a somewhat broader and more 
satisfactory view, we include with the more 
specially distinctive principles, some held in 
common with other evangelical Christians; but, 
we think, far more. purely and consistently. 

1. Justification by Faith without the Deeds of 
the Law. Man, originally made in the image 
of God, "created in righteousness and true 



l6o THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

holiness," fell, by his own unconstrained voli- 
tion, by his own free act, from his high es- 
tate, lost the image and spirit of God, and 
became a sinner; a sinner in a double sense 
— a sinner in that he was depraved in nature, 
and a sinner in that he was an actual trans- 
gressor of the law. As such a sinner, he is, 
himself being judge, justly condemned. His 
own conscience is a swift witness against him. 
He can do nothing to recover and save him- 
self. His most perfect righteousness, the .in- 
spired prophet tells us, is no better than "filthy 
rags." In infinite mercy, God has made pro- 
vision for his recovery and restoration. To 
his rescue, he has sent Jesus— the "Saviour of 
his people from their sins." Acceptance of his 
proffered intervention, is all that is necessary. 
"God so loved the world that he gave his only 
begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him 
should not perish but have everlasting life." 1 
Salvation, utterly unattainable by any human 
or finite effort, impossible to "works," is thus 
made possible to "faith" — simple heart-trust in 
Jesus. 

1 Jno. iii. 16, 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. l6l 

2. The Utility of Good Works. While these 
can effect nothing for the salvation of the 
sinner, which is accomplished by grace alone ; yet, 
as the fruits of faith, they are well pleasing 
unto God, and profitable unto men. "This 
is a faithful saying," writes the great apostolic 
champion of justification by faith alone, to 
Titus, "and these things I will that thou 
affirm constantly, that they which have be- 
lieved in God, might be careful to maintain 
good works. These things are good and profit- 
able unto men." 1 To the Hebrews he says 
— "But, to do good, and to communicate, for- 
get not: for, with such sacrifices, God is well 
pleased." 2 And, beautifully blending the 
principles of faith and of works, and showing 
the true connection of the one with the 
other, he says to the Ephesians — "For by 
grace are ye saved, through faith, and that 
not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:' 
not of works lest any man should boast For 
we are his workmanship, created in Chris/ 
Jesus unto good works \ which God hath 

'Tit iii. 8, "Heb. xiiL U. 



1 62 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

before ordained that we should walk in them." 1 
3. The All-sufficiency as a Rule of Faith and 
Practice of the Holy Scriptures. As a spiritual 
being, man needs and longs for a divine and 
unerring spiritual directory. His fellows, he 
well knows, are unable to furnish it. He sees 
that the best of them are frail and fallible like 
himself. Upon the foundation of sand, laid by 
mere human speculation and philosophy, he is 
conscious that he can have no firm, unyielding 
footing. He sighs for the solid, everlasting 
rock, on which to plant his feet. This, he intui- 
tively perceives, and instinctively feels, that only 
a Being infinitely purer and wiser than man 
himself, can give him. And, however "slow 
of heart to believe," he recognizes in the Bible — 
which, like the sun, is its own demonstration — 
that unyielding, everlasting rock ; that rock 
which shall stand, though the earth and the 
heavens pass away. 

Upon this broad and stable foundation, 
the advocates of the all-sufficiency of the holy 
Scriptures build — not at all upon the shifting 

*Eph. ii. 8, 9, 10. 



THEOLOGICAL AftD ECCLESIASTICAL. 163 

sands of tradition, the conflicting testimony 
of the so called Fathers, the decrees of Coun- 
cils, or upon any mere human creeds or 
dogmas whatever. Their motto is — "To the 
law and to the testimony; if they speak not 
according to this word, it is because there 
is no light in them." 1 They believe that 
the Bible was given to no favored sacer- 
dotal class, to be authoritatively interpreted 
by them, and dogmatically enforced upon 
the people; but that it was given to the 
whole people themselves, as individuals, to 
be interpreted, with the aid of all accessible 
helps, by each one for himself; and that 
each one is solemnly responsible for trie 
proper use of this high and glorious privi- 
lege. 

4. The Right of Private Judgment, As God 
"has given the holy Scriptures — divinely adapted 
to universal man — not to any one nation, or 
generation, or class of men, but to every 
individual man, of all generations, and coun- 
tries, and classes, it follows, that to each one 

*Ls. viii.m 



164 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

belongs the honor, and attaches the respon- 
sibility, of a personal interpretation for him- 
self, and application to himself, of their teach- 
ings. Such interpretation and application can- 
not be made for him by others. "Every- 
one of us, 7 ' says the inspired apostle, "shall 
give account of himself unto God/' 1 Again 
he says — "Let every man prove his own 
work, and then shall he have rejoicing in 
himself alone, and not in another. For every 
man shall bear his own burden.' 72 Yet again 
— "Who art thou that judgest another man's 
servant ? to his own master, he standeth or 
falleth." 3 . While each one may, and should 
avail himself of all the assistance, whether 
of men, of books, or of other things, which 
he can command, he must, with the divine 
guidance promised every honest earnest seeker 
after truth, rely mainly upon himself. He 
may appropriate the intellect, the piety, 
the scholarship, and the research of others, but 
he may not enslave himself to them. They 
can give him no infallible exposition, no 

l Eom. xiv. 12. s GaL vi. 4, 5. 3 Rom. xiv. 4. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 65 

authorative interpretation. They are not his mas- 
ters. God has exerted his infinite wisdom, 
. and given his quickening, illumining, and 
guiding Spirit, to make plain his will to the 
meanest capacity; so that he that runneth 
may read, and that the wayfaring man, 
though a fool, need not err therein. He 
has, in addition, thrown about each man, a 
thousand other helpful appliances to a right 
understanding of his sacred word. And while 
no man may abnegate either his own per- 
sonal rights or personal duties, respecting it; 
no church, no pope, no college of cardinals, 
no council, can divest or relieve him of them. 
The individual man's own rights and personal 
obligations are absolutely inalienable. As he can- 
not perform his personal duties by proxy, cannot 
transfer his personal responsibilities to another, 
so no other can rightfully take from him 
the Gcd-given means of discharging them. 

5. The Freedom and Inviolability of Conscience. 
Conscience is God's vicegerent in the hu- 
man heart. To attempt to coerce and ar- 
bitrarily control it, is sacrilege. God himself 
never subjects it to compulsion. Freedom is 



1 66 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

its very birth-right. With that freedom, "soul- 
liberty," as Roger Williams so happily called 
it, no earthly power, whether civil or eccle- 
siastical, can intermeddle. Its privileges and 
immunities none can annul or infringe. 

6. The Independence of the Individual Churches. 
If the individual man, exercising the right of 
private judgment, and following the deduc- 
tions of his own reason, embrace certain 
dogmas, and cannot rightly be compelled to re- 
linquish or modify them; so, neither can two y 
twenty, an hundred or more such individ- 
uals, embracing those, or other dogmas, and 
associating themselves together for their main- 
tenance and propagation, be required to yield 
or change them. The private judgment of a 
single individual being respected, his consci- 
entious convictions held inviolable, the judg- 
ment and conscience of a number of indi- 
viduals constituting a church, must be, a fortiori, 
respected and held inviolable. Such a body 
is not to be controlled, or interfered with, 
by another and stronger church, or confede- 
ration of churches, by any hierarchy, or 
other power at all, lower than that of God, 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 67 

He, even, as we have said, never resorts to 
moral compulsion, or, in any way, abridges 
the liberty of human souls. Persecution for 
conscience' sake, is foreign from and utterly 
abhorrent to the divine principles and spirit 
of Christianity. Not only so; it is foreign 
from and abhorrent to sound sense and 
sound philosophy. To use the homely, but 
witty, words of Butler, satirizing the bigots 
of his time, men cannot 

a — Prove their doctrine orthodox, 
By apostolic blows and knocks. 7 ' 1 

7. The Mutual Independence of Church and 
State. Both church and state are divine in- 
stitutions. The functions of the one are 
spiritual. The functions of the other are 
temporal. It would not be proper to say that 
the one is relatively superior, or inferior, to 
the other. In its sphere, under God, each is 
supreme. They are strictly co-ordinate. The 
state is necessary to the church. The church 
is necessary to the state. And this, because 
man is a two-fold being — -temporal and spirit- 
ual, civil and religious. 

l Hudibras, Parti., Cant. 1,- 199, 200. 



I 68 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

When church and state keep to their own 
proper departments, each faithfully fulfilling 
its own special duties, the one never invad- 
ing the domain of the other, the highest 
interests of both are promoted. They may r 
and ought, to act in true alliance with each 
other. They were ordained of God for such 
alliance, and may maintain it, without dis- 
turbing their individual character or integrity. 
But when they closely coalesce and blend 
their functions, as, alas' the church, (so-called), 
and the state have often done, each loses 
its own distinctive character, its proper indi- 
viduality; ceases to be what God designed 
it, and both together become a hybrid 
power, utterly anomalous in the economy of 
the gospel, and often the direst curse and 
scourge to the human race. To both, as 
distinct and separate, every good Christian 
is loyal — "rendering unto Caesar the things 
that are Caesar's, and unto God the things 
that are God's." But, when earthly rulers 
assume to "lord it over God's heritage," and 
to take the place of Jesus as the supreme 
head of the church, then all loyal subjects 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 69 

of their heavenly King cry out, in the lan- 
guage of their ancient brethren to the Jewish 
Sanhedrim — "Whether it be right in the 
sight of God to hearken unto you, more 
than unto God, judge ye; for we cannot 
but speak the things which we have seen 
and heard." 1 And, like those same heroic 
and unyielding men, when the arrogant high- 
priest assumed to exercise over them divine 
prerogatives, they, in the face of all usurp- 
ers, bravely presume to declare, and by acts 
to make good their declaration — "We ought 
to obey God, rather than men.'* 2 

And so, on the other hand, if the church, 
growing unmindful of its own proper sphere, 
and proper functions, trench upon the domain 
and the prerogatives of the state, as the church, 
(so called), has often done, all good Christians, 
as well as good citizens, cry out again — 
"We ought to obey God, rather than men'!" 
— for, then, too, it is man commanding, and 
not God — man contravening the authority of 
the Most High ; for the state, as we have 

*Acts iv. 19, $0. 2 Acts v. 28. 



170 THE GREAT MISNOMER. 

said, as well as the church, is His institu- 
tion. The powers that be, whether civil or 
ecclesiastical, are ordained of Him. 1 

8. The Essential Spirituality of the Church. — 
The spiritual and the carnal, the church and 
the world, (the poles of religious thought and 
expression), are constantly contrasted in the 
Scriptures. The essential unworldliness of 
Christ's kingdom was foreshadowed in the 
Mosaic institutes, and foretold by a)l the 
prophets. When Christ himself came to set 
it up, He said — "My kingdom is not of this 
world. " 2 He taught that all those who en- 
ter it, must be essentially and radically 
changed. To the Jewish ruler, He said — 
"Except a man be born again, he cannot 
see the kingdom of God. * * That which 
is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which 
is born of the spirit is spirit." 3 Addressing 
his disciples generally, he said — "Except ye 
be converted, and become as little children, 
ye shall not enter into the kingdom of 
heaven." 4 The inspired writers constantly 

'Rom. xiii., 1. 2 John xviii., 36. 3 John iii., 3, 6. 
4 Matt. xviii., 3. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. fj I 

addressed and referred to their brethren as the 
"saints," the "sanctified, the "holy," the 
"spiritual." And so, too, the followers of 
those illustrious men were accustomed, with 
a sweet simplicity and touching pathos, to 
inscribe upon the resting-places of their breth- 
ren who had "fallen asleep," that most sig- 
nificant and pregnant word, inclusive of 
spirituality, as well as of all other Christian 
virtues— "Faithful!" 

The men of the world, themselves, expect 
the church to be essentially different from, 
and better than the world; to be, indeed, an- 
tipodal to it; the world's opposite. However 
carnal themselves, they have no sincere re- 
spect for a church that is not spiritual, while, 
for one that is, they have the profoundest 
reverence. 

When the spiritual standard of the church 
is low, men run away into skepticism and 
practical infidelity, and laugh its teachings and 
preachings to scorn. The lack of all true 
spirituality, on the part of the so-called church 
of Rome, it was, that caused the great brood 
of French infidels, whose baneful influence. 



172 THE GREAT MISNOMER. 

conspiring with other evils, culminated in that 
"horror of great darkness," which, in the 
last century, overspread and enshrouded 
"beautiful France," and made the naturally 
noble and splendly-gifted French people — 
the Greeks of modern times — a nation of skep- 
tics and of atheists. A similar lack of spir- 
ituality, on the part of the Lutheran church 
of Germany, it is, too, that has brought 
religious darkness, dearth, and death, upon 
that land of scholars and philosophers, and 
cursed it with that deceitful and deadly foe 
of Christianity, and of all vital godliness, 
that master device of the devil — in many as- 
pects of it the very worst and most destruc- 
tive form of infidelity — Rationalism, which 
arrogantly aspires to the discrowning, by 
human hands, of the King Eternal, Immortal 
and Invisible, the only wise God ; to the 
apotheosis of human reason, and to the raising 
of a worm of the dust, to the throne of the 
Most High. 

When, on the other hand, Christian spir- 
ituality is pure and elevated, the wicked 
tremble before it, as did the debauched and 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. I 73 

infamous Roman procurator before the holy 
apostle of God, when he "preached of right- 
eousness, temperance, and judgment to come." 

9. The Proper Priesthood and Spiritual Equal- 
ity of all Believers. 

(a) Their priesthood. Peter, addressing Chris- 
tians generally, says — "Ye also, as lively 
stones, are built up a spiritual house, a holy 
priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices accept- 
able to God by Jesus Christ." Again — "Ye 
are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a 
holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should 
show forth the praises of Him who hath called 
you out of darkness into his marvelous light." 1 
John, in the Apocalypse, speaking for all 
Christians, says — "Unto Him that loved us, 
and washed us from our sins in his own 
blood, and hath made us kings and priests 
unto God and his Father, to him be glory 
and dominion, for ever and ever. Amen." 2 

Surely this language gives no place to any 
sacerdotal caste or hierarchy. None to 



^et. ii. ? 5, 9. 2 Eev. i, 5, 6. See also Rev. v., 10; 
xx., 6. 



174 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

spirual lordship and supremacy. It brings out, 
in bold relief, spiritual individualism — " living 
stones;" and yet a glorious spiritual unity, the 
unity of ho?nogeneousness — "a spiritual house." 
It reveals a living, working church, as well as 
ministry; each member of the body filling his 
proper place; all ''striving together for the 
faith of the gospel;" all " coming up to the 
help of the Lord against the mighty;" the 
whole "sacramental host of God's elect," en- 
gaged in glorious warfare, lovingly and loyally 
following their appointed leaders, not coldly 
and selfishly sending them forth, to bear, alone, 
the whole brunt and burden of the battle. 

(b) Their equality. When the disciples dis- 
puted among themselves, "which should be 
greatest?" Christ said unto them — "The kings 
of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; 
and they that exercise authority upon them, 
are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: 
but he that is greatest among you, let him be 
as the younger; and he that is chief, as he 
that doth serve.' 1 Again he said — "Be not ye 

'Luke xxii. 25, 26. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. T 7 5 

called Rabbi : for one is your Master, even 
Christ, and all ye are brethren " x 

No Christian, then, may ambitiously aspire 
to greater personal dignity or power than the 
humblest of his brethren. In honor, the peo- 
ple of God are -all to prefer one another? 
None may emulate Diotrephes, who " loved to 
have the pre-eminence." 3 No one, as inferior, 
needs the good offices and mediation of an- 
other, as superior, in order to a gracious audi- 
ence with God. "For there is one God, and 
one Mediator between God and men, the man 
Christ Jesus "^ 

This priestly character of all God's people — - 
every believer exercising sacerdotal functions, 
•' offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God, 
by Jesus Christ — is a matter of immense mo- 
ment. How it honors the individual Chris- 
tian ! How it builds up and makes prosper- 
ous the church ! How it evangelizes and 
blesses the world ! What a revenue of glory 
does it bring in to God ! It is impossible too 
highly to appreciate it. Alas ! that it should 

*Matt. xxiii., 8. 2 Rom. xii., 10; 1 Tim. v., 21. 
8 3 Jno. 9. 4 1 Tim. ii. 5. 



176 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

so often, and by so many, be disregarded. 
"We may call ourselves Protestants, or by 
any other name we please, but the restric- 
tion of the priesthood to the ministry, is the 
essential error of Popery. That system makes 
the minister the only priest— the only one to 
offer up the spiritual sacrifice of prayer and 
praise, keeping back the people from doing 
anything. And just as the old absolutists of 
Europe have placed that sovereignty in one 
man, which rightly belongs to the whole peo- 
ple, so it has devolved that priesthood upon 
the minister alone, which properly belongs to 
the whole church of Jesus Christ. The wel- 
fare of all Christian churches depends upon all 
the professors of religion ; not devolving it upon 
saints, or priests, or ministers, to pray for 
them, but themselves praying and laboring all 
for the conversion of a world to Christ. 
Here lies the great strength of true Christian 
churches; not in the labors of the ministry 
alone, but of all the people. This multiplies 
power a thousand fold." 1 

J Prog. Bap. Princ, pp. 340, 341. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. I 77 

10. The Essential Voluntariness of all True 
Religion. God made man in His own image— 
-after his own likeness. And one of the essen- 
tial points of resemblance between the Divine 
Sire and the human son is— the possession of 
the power of free and unconstrained self- 
-action. Though He may influence them, God 
never coerces the human intellect, or heart, or 
will. Man can turn to the right hand or to 
the left. He may serve God or Mammon. 
If, then, God does not compel man's spiritual 
service, does not arbitrarily impose religion, in 
any form, upon him, but gives him the widest 
and most unrestrained freedom of choice, surely 
his fellow-man may not do it — no priest, 
prelate, or pope ; no church, or council. 

11. The Inefficacy without Faith of the 
-so-called Sacraments.. The simple outward rites 
of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, are pos- 
sessed of no essential, intrinsic virtue, apart 
from the faith and spirituality, on the part 
of those who observe them, which they imply. 
Nay, so far from being beneficial, they are 
deeply injurious. Their salutary influence, like 
ihat of many natural agents, depends upon 

K 



I7'8 THE GREAT MISNOMER*, 

properly prescribed conditions. A savor of 
life unto life, when rightly used, they are a 
savor of death unto death, when abused, 
It is sometimes said, with respect especially 
to the administration of the rite of baptism 
to infants, that "if it do no good, it can do 
no harm." But it ought to be remembered 
that there are no neutral principles in the 
universe. All are active, all are positive, and 
actually do good or harm, according as they are 
properly or improperly applied. The principle 
involved in the declaration of Jesus, '-He that 
is not with me is against me," is of universal 
breadth. The act, whatever it be, that does 
not honor our Lord, dishonors Him. The 
act that does not promote the progress of 
His kingdom, obstructs and retards it. The 
act, whether secular or religious, that does not 
benefit him who performs it, or upon whom 
it is performed, (whether man or child), by 
a universal and irreversible law of nature and 
of God, harms him, harms all others with 
whom he is in any wise connected, and 
disturbs the harmony of God's government. 
The simple natural sentiment, and the strong 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. I 79 

'common sense of men, revolt at the idea 
that any use of water, whether much or little, 
a drop or an ocean, any mere bodily wash- 
ing, can cleanse the soul, remove the stains of 
guilt, overcome and destroy the native, deep- 
struck depravity of the heart, and make him 
who was spiritually polluted, pure ; him who 
was unholy, holy. So, too, do the same 
sentiment and the same sense, revolt at the 
thought that any use of bread or wine, whether 
a crumb or a loaf, a drop or a gallon, has 
any magic spiritual power. They feel that he 
who is corrupt, when he approaches either the 
baptismal font, or the table of the Lord, 
will be — without refienta?ice for his sin, and faith 
in the great Deliverer from it — corrupt when 
he leaves it; that he that is "filthy,," will 
be '-filthy stilL" Nature, (God in action and 
development), stronger than everything, is too 
strong for the sacramental theory. No meta- 
physical subtleties or sophistries can overcome 
its opposition. 

But the word of God itself directly settles 
the matter. Paul, writing to the Romans, 
says— "He is not a Jew which is one 



/So THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

outwardly ; neither is that circumcision which 
is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew 
which is one inwardly ; and circumcision is 
that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in 
the letter j whose praise is not of men, but 
of God. m Writing to the Galatians, the same 
inspired apostle says — "In Jesus Christ, neither 
circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircunv 
eision; but faith which worketh by love." 2 

12. Immersion the Rite of Initiation into the 
Church, Baptism is a beautiful symbolic rite, 
rich in meaning, admirably adapted to enlist 
the attention of men, and powerfully to im- 
press the popular heart. It represents most 
strikingly the cleansing of the soul, the 
washing away of its sins. It symbolizes the 
believer's death to sin, and his resurrection 
to newness and righteousness of life. It also 
symbolizes the death and burial of Jesus, and 
his resurrection from the tomb, and sets 
forth and keeps before his people, and the 
whole world, the glorious doctrine, that, as 
he conquered death, hell and the grave, and 

*Rom. ii. 28, 29. *Gal. v. (>. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. l8t 

rose triumphant over them, so also shall all 
his people. Thus beautiful, yet solemn, sim- 
ple, yet significant, no rite so impresses the 
popular heart. Its administration draws to- 
gether great multitudes of earnest spectators. 
And, however the irreverent, and the pro- 
fane, and the sacrilegious, may sometimes 
affect to ridicule it, the conviction is wrought 
upon all candid and dispassionate beholders, 
that it is divine—that it is the true and proper 
form of that heavenly rite to which -Christ 
himself submitted, and which he requires of 
all, who, as his professed followers, would 
rightly "put Him on," assume the appropriate 
outward insignia of discipleship, and enter by 
the proper portal, his visible church. God, 
in our day, endorses it as effectively, if not 
with the same outward demonstrations, as 
when, on the banks of the sacred river, 
thronged with the masses of "Jerusalem and 
all Judea," his Spirit, in the form of a dove, 
descended upon Jesus, as he came up, all 
radiant and glorious,- out of the baptismal 
waters, whilst the voice of the Father sub- 
limely sounded out from Heaven — "This is 



182 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

my beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased." 1 

13. Believers ihe only Proper Subjects of the 
Baptismal Rite. This is another doctrine that 
carries the unbiased and unsophisticated pop- 
ular mind. Men feel that it would be a 
profanation to administer this holy rite to 
fhe professedly unbelieving. And they equally 
feel that it is an absurdtiy to administer it to 
those who are incapable of faith, unable to 
comprehend the import of the ordinance, or 
intelligently and conscientiously to assume the 
duties and responsibilities which it imposes. 
All this they perceive and feel without any 
high degree of scriptural intelligence on their 
own part, or any elaborate argument on the 
part of their religious teachers. All that is 
requisite to carry their convictions is the 
statement of a few simple scriptural facts, 
the enforcement of a few simple scriptural 
principles, readily apprehended by all classes 
of mind, in connection with the simple scrip- 
tural administration of the heavenly rite. 

*Matt. iii. 16, 17. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL, 183 

These are the great and divine doctrines, 
which, in whole, need only to be announced, 
to unbiased and dispassionate men, in order 
to be acknowledged as divine. These are 
the doctrines whose heavenly principles and 
spirit alone can enfranchise the human mind 
and the human heart. They are the base 
on which rests the higher civilization, the 
purer morality, the fuller freedom of modern 
times. Having already effected so much, they 
are destined to effect yet vastly more, in 
emancipating the nations, as well as individ- 
ual men, and in endowing them with all the 
blessings of the truest and the largest liberty. 

The great body of the honest, truth-lov- 
ing people, with a sure, unerring instinct of 
the true and the good, are quick to see and 
recognize their value. God, in revealing them, 
has adjusted them to those for whom they 
were designed. The people, in receiving 
them, do but make natural as well as grate- 
ful response to His wisdom and His love. 

Surely, one would think that such princi- 
ples, with their intrinsic worth and outward 



184 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

power, should long since have swept id 
triumph through the world; and that those 
who have so firmly held and gallantly de- 
fended them throughout all the ages-, should 
be the honored of the earth. Ah, no! Jesus* 
held them. And He was crucified. The 
apostles held them. And they, too, were mar- 
tyred. De Bruys, Lollard, Hubmeier and 
Tauber held them. And theirs was a simi- 
lar fate. 

Like many of the chief benefactors of their 
species, in other lines of life, the noblest 
witnesses for religious truth, have generally 
failed, (however appreciated by the humbler 
ranks of men,) of a true appreciation by the 
dominant powers of the world, and have often 
encountered from them the bitterest preju- 
dice, and the crudest persecution. 

In our own day, and especially in our 
own country, thanks to the prevalence of 
these principles themselves, opposition to their 
most zealous and consistent advocates has 
been relieved of much of its harshness and 
severity. But, however modified and softened,, 
it is still maintained on the part of many 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL, 1 85 

from whom a far nobler spirit and policy 
might have been expected. 

For this continued opposition to those who 
have deserved the highest commendation 
rather than censure, many reasons might be 
assigned. One of great weight, if it may 
not be ranked as the chief, is, misapprehen- 
sion of the principle and spirit of their ad- 
ministration of the Christian ordinances, par- 
ticularly that of the Lord's Supper. Through 
this misapprehension, a wide-spread and bitter 
outcry is raised against what is called their 
"close-communion" — (incongruous and distaste- 
ful compound, distilling drops of bitterness 
into the cup of sweets!) — an outcry utterly 
ungenerous and unjust. Their communion 
may be strict, but it is not close. It has 
a truly evangelic breadth and openness. 
They commune widely and freely, as we 
have seen, with all the followers of Jesus, 
in prayer, in praise, in efforts for the salva- 
tion of the perishing, in every lawful and 
laudable enterprise for the propagation of 
divine truth, and for the promotion of the 
divine glory. But their very love of the 



1 86 THE GREAT MISNOMER. 

truth, and of the ordinances, their very zeal 
for God's glory and for the spiritual welfare 
of men, as evinced by their unswerving de- 
votion to such principles as we have men- 
tioned, is a bar to their communion with 
anything and everything which they regard 
as inimical to those high and holy ends. 

In other ages, and in less highly favored 
lands, as we have said, the strong hand of 
power was laid heavily upon them. They 
braved the cross, and the block, and the 
sword, and the gibbet, the dungeon, the rack, 
the wheel, the stake. Now, however, where 
sheer power and persecution cannot be brought 
to bear, other methods, prompted by a seem- 
ingly opposite spirit, have sometimes been 
adopted. The general mind aspires to great 
breadth of view, the general heart to great 
breadth of sympathy. The age, as has been 
said, is "in love with liberality" — and every- 
thing that affects its tones, or wears its guise, 
is appreciated and applauded; whilst every- 
thing, however true, and honest, and noble, 
that seems to differ from it, is reproached. 
Hence som^, having, we fear, no true breadth 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. T87 

of view, no real breadth of sympathy, how 
ever much they may affect them, taking acL 
vantage of the scriptural strictness of admin_ 
istration of the ordinances of the gospel, 
particularly that of the sacred Supper, on the 
part of these Strict Constructionists of the Divine 
Constitution, seem anxious to fix upon them 
the odium of illiberality; and thus, by dis- 
paraging them, to retard the progress of their 
peculiar principles. Failing to carry the day 
in fair and open conflict, these partizans of 
error resort to stratagem. Everybody knows 
that the true issue, the real point of con- 
flict, between them and their opponents, is 
Baptism. But these redoubtable warriors 
raise the siege of that stronghold, and strive 
by adroit manoeuvres and skillful strategy to 
accomplish what could not be effected in the 
open field by main strength and actual prow- 
ess. Changing the seat of war, shifting the 
scenes of battle, they make feints against points 
of little or no importance, in the hope, by 
a covert attack, a disguised system of sap- 
ping and mining, of ultimately carrying the 
citadel itself. 



t88 the great misnomer, 

And it must be confessed that these in- 
genious tactics have not been without effect. 
The general mind has been greatly confused 
and perverted. Many sincere lovers of truth 
have been led unwittingly into error. And 
many generous and magnanimous spirits have 
been so influenced as to withhold sympathy 
from those worthiest of it, while bestowing it 
upon the undeserving. Hence it is, in part, 
at least, that while the advocates of the 
great principles just now under review, have 
carried the argument from Scripture, and his- 
tory, and scholarship, and constrained at least 
the partial acceptance of their doctrines, by 
not a few who once rejected them, they 
have not made the general and triumphant 
advance, in all directions, which they have de- 
served. Nay, while their true and rightful 
policy is the aggressive, they have often been 
led to assume the defensive. 

Nothing, to-day, more interferes with their 
doctrinal and denominational success, nothing 
more obstructs the progress of their princi- 
ples, than the. unreasonable clamors so per- 
sistently raised against their proper scriptural 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 89 

strictness of administration of our Lord's 
Memorial rite, as an unjust and illiberal 

' ' CLOSE-COMMUNION. " 

Unscriptural views of this great Memorial 
Ordinance of our Lord, have more min- 
istered to those unreasonable clamors, more 
stimulated and strengthened them, than al- 
most any other cause whatever. Noth- 
ing, then, would more help to retrieve 
what has been lost, and to insure future 
progress, than to impress the popular 
mind with just conceptions of the real 
nature and design of the sacred Supper, 
and the proper position and true spirit 
to be assumed in respect to its administra- 
tion. And we think it clear, in the light of 
all that we have said, that a most important 
advance, in that direction, would be made, by 
correcting the misapprehensions engendered 
and fostered by the common designation of 
the rite, as — the Communion. 

And now, as the way to overcome evil, is 
to oppose good to it; the way to dispel 
darkness, to pour light upon it; the way to 
supplant error, to bring the truth against it; 



I90 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

we take occasion, seriously and earnestly to 
propose, that, if the Lord's Supper be not 
name enough for our Lord's Memorial ordi- 
nance; if we must have another name by which 
to designate it, that it be not, the Com- 
munion; but, a name equally beautiful and far 
more just, that of — the Co?nmemoration. 

In favor of this, rather than the other ap- 
pellation, are, as we have seen, both reason 
and the word of God, as well as practical 
considerations of the highest value. 




XXL 
DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY. 

O effect the substitution which we suggest 
will, we know, be difficult, if not im- 
possible. Some will smile at our simplicity, 
wonder at our temerity, in making the propo- 
sition. But, however that may be, we put it 
forward, and in the boldest relief that we 
can give it. 

The great misnomer against which we so 
strongly protest, was long in establishing 
itself. But it struck its roots deeply, and 
spread them widely, and has grown into 
grand proportions. And it may be that a 
similar lapse of time will be requisite to dis- 
establish and uproot it. Yet not necessarily 
so. The giant oak of a thousand years, is 
often prostrated, in a moment, by the blast 
of heaven, and may be felled, in a few 
hours, by the well-directed strokes of human 
hands. And so may it be with this 



I92 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

deep-struck, wide-spread tree of error. Still, 
however sanguine, we can hardly hope it. It 
is a very tower of strength. It has been built 
up, and buttressed, and entrenched, and forti- 
fied, for more than half a score of centuries, 
by millions of cunning hands; and that will 
be a strong as well as cunning hand, that 
shall overthrow it. Thine, O God! alone can 
do it. 

But, to speak humanly, and with less bold- 
ness of figure, this great misnomer is too 
completely ingrained, too deeply imbedded in 
our religious literature, too widely engrafted 
upon every species of writing, as well as of 
common speech, too completely naturalized, 
so to speak, in the general sentiment and 
sympathies of men, to be readily discarded 
and expelled. Writers of every name, and 
of every shade of doctrine, ancients and 
moderns, Papists and Protestants, Baptists and 
Pedobaptists, Calvinists and Arminians, have 
accepted and accredited it. 

The greater part of that learned and able 
work, written some years since, by the late 
Dr, Curtis, in the interest of the general 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 93 

Baptist view of the Lord's Supper, (and from 
which we have quoted two or three brief 
but valuable paragraphs), owes its origin to 
this egregious error; and, but for it, would 
not have learnedly and eloquently encum- 
bered a perfectly plain and simple subject. 

And this remark will apply to a number of 
-similar treatises. Indeed, almost all the 
formal works of the Baptists, (as well as of 
others), upon this subject; their discussions in 
the periodical press, and their oral discus- 
sions, take shape and color from the same 
erroneous view. It will be hard for them, 
though the great misnomer has constantly 
stood in their way, and obstructed their prog- 
ress, to yield their old ideas, and to alter their 
*old methods, in respect to it; hard, in any 
degree, to discredit their own literary and the- 
ological offspring. Iconoclastic as they might 
be, under other circumstances, it were hardly 
wonderful if they hesitated to cast down and 
break the images themselves have raised. 

But a much nobler principle than that of per- 
sonal pride and self-appreciation, (carried too 

L 



194 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

far, and wrongly applied), may make them 
still, indirectly at least, countenance and 
strengthen the great error. Though our 
brethren have been so often spoken of as 
radical \ they are eminently conservative. They 
are not "tossed to and fro, and carried about 
with every wind of doctrine/' 1 They are 
no light-minded, news-mongering Athenians, 
"spending their time in nothing else but 
either to tell or to hear some new thing/' 2 
They have no affinity for new-fangled theo- 
ries. They are no followers of "new men, 
studious of new things." ]No! They "stand 
in the ways, and see, and ask for the old 
paths, where is the good way, and walk 
therein." 3 They are in love with the ancient 
gospel. They never weary of the "old. old 
story." Whilst "all the world wondered" and 
wandered "after the Beast"*' they never did 
it. Theirs it was, and is, and will ever be, 
as a people, a church — beloved and loving 
Spouse of Christ — to raise, amidst the loud 
and foul idolatrous conclamation, unceasing 

x Eph. iv. 14. 2 Actsxvii. 21. 3 Jer. vi. 16. 4 Kev. 
xiii. 3. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 195 

r counter-cry, and to shout to the wondering and 
the wandering — "Behold The Lamb of God!" 
O, Bride of the Lamb! radiant and beautiful-] 
O, Woman of the Wilderness ! thou comest up 
•sublimely from thy long exile, "leaning upon 
thy Beloved/' 1 with this triumphant self-abne- 
gating acclaim of thy double-love — love of thy 
Lord and love of thy children — heaving from 
thy swelling heart. 

This very firmness and stability, this strong 
indisposition to change what once they have 
accepted, may make our brethren still patron- 
ize the great misnomer. They never recog- 
nized the main errors involved in that false 
name. Still, they have allowed, almost un- 
challenged, the word itself. They have not 
always borne in mind the wise and weighty 
adage which we have quoted, that "words are 
things " Conservators of truth, let them not 
become conservators of error, even in a name-. 
Let them be quick to disown and renounce it. 
Pride of seeming consistency; unwillingness, while 
so strenuously contending for the right, to ap. 
faar, in anything, to have been in the wrong, 

^ev. xii. Cant. viii. 5. 



I96 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

may influence them. But they who have done 
so many higher, ay, and harder things, surely 
can rise superior to this lower and less difficult 
one. 

The misusage in question, from custom and 
fixed habit, has become so natural, and so 
convenient; is connected with so many de- 
lightful associations, so many sweet and cher- 
ished memories, and is therefore so dear, that 
it will, perhaps, seem to some not only un- 
wise, but even a cruel violence, to disturb it. 

Other ecclesiastical terms, however, employed 
in an unscriptural sense, pervade our litera- 
ture, and are strongly entrenched in it. Yet 
Baptists, and some others, too, constantly pro- 
test against and assail the unscriptural usage 
in respect to them. For consistency's sake; 
for something dearer still — for truth's sake; for 
the sake of their dear Lord and his glo- 
rious kingdom among men, let them do the 
same thing in respect to the false usage of 
the term so unfortunately applied to the 
Lord's Supper. Though it be dear as a right 
eye, or a right hand, since it offends, let it be 
sacrificed. 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 97 

If it be too firmly fixed in our theological 
and other literature, too strongly entrenched 
in the general mind, and common speech, to 
be dislodged from its strongholds, all possible 
and feasible means should be employed to 
counteract and neutralize the evils which it 
propagates and fosters. 

And we make no doubt that that, at least, 
may be accomplished with respect to it, which 
has been achieved in respect to certain errors 
connected with the baptismal controversy. In 
defiance of genius and learning, wit and rhet- 
oric, specious and subtle sophistry, worldly 
rank, and power, and wealth, and influence, 
the protest made against those errors has not 
been made in vain — as the state and tone of 
the popular mind as well as of general re- 
ligious literature amply attest 



xxir, 

CONCLUDING REMARKS. 

)N concluding our dissertation, we take oc- 
casion to say, what, perhaps, we should 
have said before beginning it. It did not 
occur to us to write a preface to our little- 
book. And perhaps it was well. In these- 
rapid, rushing, busy times, if men read at all, 
they do not like to be detained a moment 
by explanations, on the threshold of a subject, 
and often "skip" them, and plunge in medias 
res. So our salutatory might have been of no 
avail. And, indeed, we are not without mis- 
givings about the fate of our inverted preface, 
or valedictory. Whilst that may have been 
skipped, this may not be reached at all. 
Still, with an humble hope that the kind and 
courteous reader and ourselves may have got- 
ten up enough momentum to take us through, 
we venture to make our statement. It is* 
this : 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1 99 

We have always felt that the scriptural 
strictness observed by our brethren in the ad- 
ministration of the Lord's Supper, was right \ 
and that opposition to it was a mere preju- 
dice, resting upon no proper principle at all. 
And if right, we felt that it might be made 
so to appear to all fair-minded persons. The 
chief difficulty in the way of this, seemed 
to us not to lie so much in different views 
of the proper priority of baptism to the Supper, 
or of the proper action and real substance of 
the precedent ordinance, as in a misapprehen- 
sion which pertinaciously connected itself with 
the great essential purpose of the Supper, and 
in prejudices thereby engendered. 

All evangelical Christians concede in theory 
that to commemorate Christ in His sufferings 
and death for his people is that grand essen- 
tial purpose. But, with that, many have con- 
nected, as essential, another object — that of 
the mutual communion of believers — (which is only, 
at most, incidental, and infinitely inferior to the 
main design); and have practically superseded 
the former idea by the latter. 

If all this, with kindred truths, could be 



200 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

properly shown, it was felt that the outcry 
against so-called "close-communion," would 
appear to be absurd, and should, therefore, be 
put to shame, and forever hushed. Hence 
this dissertation. 

We trust that our work may be, in some- 
humble degree, at least, useful to the right- 
eous cause so zealously espoused and so* 
bravely defended by those noble Christian 
people to whom we have, in previous sections,, 
specially referred J and with whose principles 
and practice respecting the Lord's Supper we- 
ar e in full accord and hearty sympathy. 
Their distinction and honor it has been, if 
not to make for Christ a conquest of the 
world, at least to hold for Him, through all 
the Christian ages, and against fearful odds, 
the citadels of truth. To hold them, is 
still their high and glorious mission/ 

That they appreciate this mission is manifest 
from the words of one of the ablest and most 
revered of their writers. He says — "One of 
the earliest corruptions of Christianity con- 
sisted in magnifying the importance of its 
ceremonies, and ascribing to them a saving 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 201 

efficacy. With this superstitious reverence of 
outward forms, a tendency was introduced to 
corrupt these forms, and substitute ceremonies 
of human invention for the ordinances of 
God. To restoi r e these ordinances to their origijial 
purity, and, at the same time, to understand 
and teach that outward rites have no saving 
efficacy, appears to be a service to which God 
has specially called the Baptists. We are often 
charged with attaching too much importance 
to immersion; but the notion that baptism 
possesses a sacramental efficacy finds no ad- 
vocates in our ranks. It introduced infant 
baptism, and prevailed with it, and it still 
lingers among those by whom infant baptism 
is practiced. Our principles, by restricting bap- 
tism to those who are already regenerate, sub- 
vert the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and 
exhibit the ceremony in its proper relation to 
experimental religion. To give due prominence 
to spirituality, above all outward ceremony, is an 
important service to which God has called our 
denomination . ' n 

T)agg's Manual of Theology, Part IT., p. 301. 



202 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

May He whose prerogative it is to fire 
the heart with valor, and to nerve the arm 
with strength, make them equal to the ar- 
duous yet inspiring and sublime duty assigned 
them. 

We also trust that what we have written, 
so far as it may be read, will be received 
with Christian charity and candor by such of 
our common Christian brotherhood as may 
not be agreed with us in the views which 
we have disclosed, and prove not altogether 
unacceptable and unprofitable to them. In 
what we have written —while widely differing 
from others — we have had towards them no 
spirit of hostility or of disparagement. We 
regard them as our brethren, the children of 
our common Father, the servants of our 
common Lord. We claim an interest in 
Luther and Melancthon, in Calvin and Knox, 
in Leighton and Hooker, in Whitfield and 
Wesley, in Edwards and Doddridge, in Heber 
and Chalmers; as well as in Menno and 
Tauber, Helwysse and Williams, Bunyan and 
Gill, Booth and Fuller, Hall and Foster, Car- 
son and Haldane. Thev all alike held the great 



THEOLOGICAL AND- ECCLESIASTICAL. 203 

saving truths of the gospel They all alike 
did valiant service for those truths. We 
reverence them. We cherish their memory. 
The writings of many of them we hold 
among the richest treasures of our library. 
And we rejoice in believing that in no slight 
degree through their manifold labors and 
holy lives, there is a constant approximation 
towards a truer union and communion among 
all believers, and the realization in its fullness 
of the prayer of Jesus that his people, all r 
might be one as He and His Father are 
one — one in the truth, and in love of the 
truth ; one in essential principle and spirit ; 
one in aim and effort for the glory of God 
and the salvation of the world. 

Nothing within the range of our experience 
and observation more saddens our heart 
than exhibitions of a lack of such true unity, 
and the absence of that genuine Christian 
sympathy and brotherly love by which it is 
inspired and sustained. 

In our day, as in all times, hostility to 
the gospel is wide-spread and intense. Many 
of the finest and most cultivated intellects of 



204 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

the world are leading the cohorts of error, 
of infidelity, of atheism, with a vigor and 
audacity truly appalling. They are diffusing 
a double-distilled poison of skepticism through- 
out the most advanced nations of the world. 
They are misleading and corrupting the 
thought and the morals of the very flower 
of our youth. They are doing much to sap 
the foundations of all faith, and to inaugurate 
a universal reign of doubt — doubt, dark, 
dreary, and despairing; and so, hopelessly 
depraving and destructive. They have brought 
upon the very masses of the people, upon 
our cities and towns and rural districts, upon 
our families, upon our very churches, upon 
the ministers of the churches even, a very 
epidemic of unbelief and misbelief, and 
plunged, through blank and black despair, many 
bright intellects and naturally noble spirits into 
the awful gulf of "Pessimism" (teaching that 
all things are not ultimately for the best but 
for the worst) only less horrible than that of 

hell itself. 

Oh! then, surely all the lovers of the truth, and 

of those who are dying for lack of it, should 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 205 

1 'come up to the help of the Lord against 
the Mighty;" against that "God of this 
World" who "hath blinded the eyes of them 
which believe not, lest the light of the glo- 
rious gospel of Christ, who is the image of 
God, should shine unto them. 5 ' 1 Oh! surely 
all the sons of God, led by His Spirit, the 
Spirit of truth, should rally to that "stand- 
ard" which — now that the great "Enemy," 
the Father of Lies, has "come in like a 
flood" — the blessed "Spirit," flying to the 
rescue, is "uplifting against him,' 2 and help 
to stay the tide of death and desolation. 

Ah! these divisions and sub-divisions of 
God's people! — this breaking and disintegrat- 
ing of "the pillar and ground of the truth" 
— this exhaustion of strength in mutual con- 
flicts over issues that involve no principle, 
but only prejudice blind and unreasoning — 
these are the things that stay the final and 
complete triumph of the Redeemer's kingdom. 
Never will that triumph be accomplished, 
while these conflicts and divisions last. It 

l 2 Cor. iv. -1. 2 Is. lix. 19 



2o6 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

is only when they have ceased, that the 
glorious Spouse of Christ, as Solomon sings 
of her, shall ' ; look forth as the morning, 
fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and 
terrible as an army with banners;" 1 and that 
to her, as Queen of earth, and Queen of heaven, 
all shall make obeisance. 

That unity of his people for which Jesus 
prayed, is necessary to the conversion of 
the world. Without it, the world will not 
believe. With it, the faith of the world shall 
be compelled. This is implied in the words 
of Jesus, when, in his intercessory supplica- 
tion for his people just before he suffered, 
he thus besought his Father — ''That they -all- 
may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and 
I in thee, that they also may be one in us 
■ — that the world may believe that thou hast sent 
me." 2 

The exhibition of such unity, which no 
human legislation or philosophy, no earthly 
power at all, has been able to effect, will 
be a demonstration to the world of the 

l 8ong of Sol., vi. 10. 2 Jno. xvii. 21, 



THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 20J 

divinity of the Power that can and does effect 
it ; a demonstration that will convince the 
judgment of men, that will carry the intellect of 
the world. Carrying the intellect, that unity 
will, too, by its beauty and amiability, carry 
the heart of the world; for every one, how- 
ever cold, and selfish, and unloving, responds 
to the words of the Psalmist — "Behold, how 
good and how pleasant it is for brethren 
to dwell together in unity ! m Further still — 
this unity will develop in the church a 
power invincible, irresistible, that shall go 
forth "conquering and to conquer;" that 
shall "triumph in every place" over all op- 
position; till, to Him who wields it, through 
his people, every knee shall bow and every 
tongue confess." 2 

Then, and not till then, shall the vision of the 
seer of the Apocalypse be realized. There will 
be heard great voices in heaven saying — 
"The kingdoms of this world are become 
the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ; 
and he shall reign forever and ever." 3 And 

x Ps. cxxxiii. 1 2 Kom. xiv. 11. 3 Is. xlv. 23; 
Eph. ii. 10. 



-2o8 THE GREAT MISNOMER, 

all the voices of earth like the s^und of 
many waters gladly and triumphantly re- 
sponding shall say — Amen] 

Oh, let us, then, be one! Let us sweetly 
and broadly "commune" with each other, (al- 
ways, however, in accordance with the law of 
Christ,) "in every good word and work/' and 
not cramp our fellowship by a test, that is no 
test; and which our divine Lord has never im- 
posed upon his people or his churches. Ours 
be the motto so honorable to the heart that in- 
spired it — "In things essential, unity; in things 
indifferent, liberty; in all things, charity/' 

Finally — and above all-— let us say that we 
would venture humbly to hope that our work 
may be acceptable to our divine Lord; and 
that, by his blessing upon it, it may be promo- 
tive of a better understanding and a worthier 
observance of his holy Ordinance of Com* 

MEMORATION. 



